"Nicolas! This is too much! No, no, I beg of you to let me leave you!"
Adelaide had put her hand to her heart, given him a look in which passionate tenderness seemed to strive with wounded pride, quitted her chair, and hurried, the Roumanian hot upon her heels, to the door communicating with the boudoir. Detained by his feverish grasp upon her hand, prisoned by the muscular arm about her waist, she could only reiterate her desire for freedom. Straz asseverated:
"Yes! when you have forgiven me! Pardon, beloved Adelaide! Life of my life, you know we Slavs are naturally suspicious—it is always in our blood!"
He thrust his face to hers, amorously ogling. The slight thickening of the consonants, due to catarrh, made his passionate speech sound grotesquely ridiculous. The approach of his mouth, the contact of his breath, reminded the fastidious Adelaide that such colds could be transferred. So she smiled dazzlingly upon him, and gently freed herself from his enfolding tentacles, leaning her softly-tinted cheek downwards to the shoulder her own overtopped.
"You are pardoned, my beloved one! But think with me how this bill may be settled! What if you really should be in danger in this place!"
He shrugged hopelessly, and ejaculated:
"Sapristi! I can conceive it possible.... But—hampered by the lack of money, what are we to do?"
She said with a start, as if suddenly enlightened:
"Dearest, I have some jewels.... Think nothing of the sacrifice! ... Will it not be made for him who is more to me than all?..."
"Angel! ... Now I know, indeed, that Adelaide is true to me! Pardon thy slave, who dared to deem otherwise!"