Much to my surprise, and somewhat to my mortification, Thérèse greeted me with her old sunny smile. Her "Bon jour, Monsieur," was as cordial as ever; and it even seemed to me—and that didn't in the least tend to compose me—that her eyes sparkled with an archness which I had never seen in them before, and that her voice had in it a tinge of malice, as she held out to me two of her finest bunches, saying,—
"Est-ce que, Monsieur en desire deux encore ce soir?"
I was very angry with her for being in such good-humor, and believe I was anything but aimable or polite with her. Why did she not look hurt or offended and reproach me for my desertion, instead of almost disarming my senseless anger by her gentleness?
"It seems that Monsieur forgets his old friends, sometimes," she continued, as I took the flowers she had been holding towards me, and was fumbling in my pocket for the change.
"Forget!" I stammered; for the temper I found her in had so completely ruffled mine, that I was hardly sufficiently master of myself to be able to answer her at all,—"what makes you think I forget? Am I not here this evening, as usual?"
"This evening, yes,—but last night you did not come; or were you here too late to find me? I"——she paused, and, with her color a little heightened, as though she had narrowly escaped making a disclosure, looked another way,—"Monsieur must have bought his flowers elsewhere, yesterday. Were they as fresh and sweet as mine?"
"But how do you know, Mademoiselle,"—I answered, after I had given her a long opportunity to add what I had hoped would follow that long-drawn-out "I"; (she was going to say, I was sure, that she had waited for me to come as long as was possible;)—"How do you know that I bought my flowers elsewhere, or that I bought any? And where can I find finer ones than you give me?"
"Monsieur is kind enough to say so," she returned. "Can you excuse my indiscretion? I only thought, that, as you never miss carrying a bunch of flowers home with you, and sometimes two," she added, with a wicked twinkle in the corner of her mouth, "you must have found some better than mine, last night. But Monsieur will, of course, act his own pleasure."
Thérèse had never appeared to me more charming than at that moment. I wondered afterwards how I had been able to tear myself away from her, and was almost angry that I had not thrown down my second bunch, had not vowed to her that I would never desert her again, and had not confessed that the pain I had suffered from my folly had more than equalled hers, since I was never so happy as when I could be near and see her and hear the music of her voice.
And this was my life, and these the pains I used to suffer. Two tender passions held alternate possession of my fickle heart, and a constant struggle was always waging between them for the mastery; and the impossibility of deciding in favor of either of them, which to accept and which deny, prevented my yielding to either. Thérèse, however, whose real presence I could enjoy, upon whose delicious beauty I could feast my eyes whenever the fancy seized me, and whose voice I could hear, even when separated from her, possessed a fearful advantage over her invisible rival, who maintained her position in my interest only by preserving her incognito and maintaining my curiosity strained to the highest pitch. My acquaintance with Thérèse became daily more intimate, and was soon upon such a footing as seemed to authorize my asking her to accompany me on a Sunday jaunt to one of the thousand resorts of Parisian pleasure-seekers just beyond the barriers of the city.