o be particular with her; come."

What he said troubled me. I feared to discover that Marguerite was not
worthy of the sentiment which I felt for her.

In a book of Alphonse Karr entitles Am Rauchen, there is a man who one
evening follows a very elegant woman, with whom he had fallen in love
with at first sight on account of her beauty. Only to kiss her hand he
felt that he had the strength to undertake anything, the will to conquer
anything, the courage to achieve anything. He scarcely dares glance at
the trim ankle which she shows as she holds her dress out of the mud.
While he is dreaming of all that he would do to possess this woman, she
stops at the corner of the street and asks if he will come home with
her. He turns his head, crosses the street, and goes sadly back to his
own house.

I recalled the story, and, having longed to suffer for this woman, I was
afraid that she would accept me too promptly and give me at once what
I fain would have purchased by long waiting or some great sacrifice. We
men are built like that, and it is very fortunate that the imagination
lends so much poetry to the senses, and that the desires of the body
make thus such concession to the dreams of the soul. If any one had
said to me, You shall have this woman to-night and be killed tomorrow, I
would have accepted. If any one had said to me, you can be her lover for
ten pounds, I would have refused. I would have cried like a child who
sees the castle he has been dreaming about vanish away as he awakens
from sleep.

All the same, I wished to know her; it was my only means of making up my
mind about her. I therefore said to my friend that I insisted on having
her permission to be introduced to her, and I wandered to and fro in the
corridors, saying to myself that in a moment's time she was going to
see me, and that I should not know which way to look. I tried (sublime
childishness of love!) to string together the words I should say to her.

A moment after my friend returned. "She is expecting us," he said.

"Is she alone?" I asked.

"With another woman."

"There are no men?"

"No."

"Come, then."

My friend went toward the door of the theatre.

"That is not the way," I said.

"We must go and get some sweets. She asked me for some."

We went into a confectioner's in the passage de l'Opera. I would have
bought the whole shop, and I was looking about to see what sweets to
choose, when my friend asked for a pound of raisins g