nerves--the most
feminine woman in the world, irresponsible, capricious--please, please
remember."

"If you were not yourself I should not love you."

"But it cannot come to anything."

"Cannot? The word is for pigmies."

"But my mother?"

"She is a woman--I will talk to her."

"My father!"

"He is a man, with men one can always get on. They are reasonable.
Besides, you tell me he is an author, and I will read his famous
books."

She smiled faintly. "But there is myself."

"You are myself--and I never doubt myself."

"Oh, but there are heaps of other difficulties."

"There are none other."

She pouted deliciously. "You don't know everything under the sun."

"Under your aureole of hair, do you mean?"

"What if I do?" she smiled back. "You must not trust me too far. I am
a spoilt child--wild, unbridled, unaccustomed to please others except
by pleasing myself."

Her actress-nature enjoyed the picture of herself. She felt that
Baudelaire himself would have admired it. Lassalle's answer was subtly
attuned:

"My Satanic enchantress! my bewitching child of the devil."

"_Bien fou qui s'y fie._ When I lived at Nice in that royal Bohemia,
where musicians rubbed shoulders with grand-duchesses, and the King of
Bavaria exchanged epigrams with Bulwer Lytton, do you know what they
called me?"

"The Queen of all the Follies!"

"You know?"

"Did I not love my Brunehild ere we met?"

"Yes, and I--knew of you. Only I didn't recognize you at first,
because they told me you were a frightful demagogue and--a--a--Jew!"

He laughed. "And so you expected a gaberdine. And yet surely Bulwer
Lytton gave you a presentation copy of _Leila_. Don't you remember the
Jew in it? As a boy I had his ideal--to redeem my people. But if my
Judaism offends you, I can become a Christian--not in belief of
course, but--"

"Oh, not for worlds. I believe too little myself to bother about
religion. My friends call me the Greek, because I can readily believe
in many gods, but only with difficulty in one."

He laughed. "Is it the same in love?"

Her eyes gleamed archly.

"Yes. Hitherto, at least, a single man has never sufficed. With only
one I had time to see all his faults, and since my first love, a
Russian officer, I would always have preferred to keep three knives
dancing in the air. But as that was impossible, I generally halved my
loaf."

The mountains rang with his laughter.

"Well. I haven't lived a saint, and I can't