t be prouder or more happy than he is; he declares
that he is completing my education, that in me you have sent him a book
full of wisdom, but unconnected and unbound, which he is now making a
fair copy, and putting it between covers.

On two occasions I played _hombre_ with Pepita. Learning _hombre_, if
that be a part of the binding and the correcting, is already done with.

The night after my equestrian feat Pepita received me with enthusiasm,
and--what she had never ventured nor perhaps desired to do before--she
gave me her hand.

Do not suppose that I did not call to mind what so many moralists and
ascetics recommend in like cases, but in my inmost thoughts I believed
they exaggerated the danger. Those words of the Holy Spirit, that it is
as dangerous to touch a woman as a scorpion, seem to me to have been
said in another sense. In pious books, no doubt, many phrases and
sentences of the Scriptures are, with the best intentions, interpreted
harshly. How are we to understand otherwise the saying that the beauty
of woman, this perfect work of God, is always the cause of perdition? Or
how are we to understand, in a universal and invariable sense, that
woman is more bitter than death? How are we to understand that he who
touches a woman, on whatever occasion or with whatsoever thought, shall
not be without stain?

In fine, I made answer rapidly within my mind to these and other similar
counsels, and took the hand that Pepita kindly extended to me and
pressed it in mine. Its softness made me comprehend all the better the
delicacy and beauty of the hand that until now I had known only by
sight.

According to the usages of the world, the hand, once given, should be
given always thereafter on entering a room and on taking leave. I hope
that in this ceremony, in this evidence of friendship, in this
manifestation of kindness, given and accepted in purity of heart, and
without any mixture of levity, you will see nothing either evil or
dangerous.

As my father is often obliged of an evening to see the overseer and
others of the country-people, and is seldom free until half-past ten or
eleven, I take his place beside Pepita at the ombre-table. The reverend
vicar and the notary are generally the other partners. We each stake a
penny a point, so that not more than a dollar or two changes hands in
the game.

As the game possesses thus but little interest, we interrupt it
constantly with pleasant conversation, and even with