beg of you, my grand angel with the black eyes, so pure
and proud, so serious and so pretty, do not turn away from these cries,
which the first reading of your letter has torn from me! I have taken
comfort in the thought that, while I was lamenting, love was doubtless
busy knocking down the scaffolding of reason.

It may be that I shall do worse than you without any reasoning or
calculations. Passion is an element in life bound to have a logic not
less pitiless than yours.

Monday.

Yesterday night I placed myself at the window as I was going to bed, to
look at the sky, which was wonderfully clear. The stars were like silver
nails, holding up a veil of blue. In the silence of the night I could
hear some one breathing, and by the half-light of the stars I saw my
Spaniard, perched like a squirrel on the branches of one of the trees
lining the boulevard, and doubtless lost in admiration of my windows.

The first effect of this discovery was to make me withdraw into the
room, my feet and hands quite limp and nerveless; but, beneath the fear,
I was conscious of a delicious undercurrent of joy. I was overpowered
but happy. Not one of those clever Frenchmen, who aspire to marry me,
has had the brilliant idea of spending the night in an elm-tree at the
risk of being carried off by the watch. My Spaniard has, no doubt, been
there for some time. Ah! he won't give me any more lessons, he wants to
receive them--well, he shall have one. If only he knew what I said to
myself about his superficial ugliness! Others can philosophize besides
you, Renee! It was horrid, I argued, to fall in love with a handsome
man. Is it not practically avowing that the senses count for three parts
out of four in a passion which ought to be super-sensual?

Having got over my first alarm, I craned my neck behind the window in
order to see him again--and well was I rewarded! By means of a hollow
cane he blew me in through the window a letter, cunningly rolled round a
leaden pellet.

Good Heavens! will he suppose I left the window open on purpose?

But what was to be done? To shut it suddenly would be to make oneself an
accomplice.

I did better. I returned to my window as though I had seen nothing and
heard nothing of the letter, then I said aloud:

"Come and look at the stars, Griffith."

Griffith was sleeping as only old maids can. But the Moor, hearing me,
slid down, and vanished with ghostly rapidity.

He must have been dying of fright, and