e Blanc by declaring the
sketch I was doing of the woods there, was hopelessly bad--I would
never complete it."

"Ah!" and Dumaresque's exclamation had a note of hope; "he had been a
bore after all?"

"The farthest thing possible from it! When I woke in the morning it
was an hour earlier than usual. I found myself with my eyes scarcely
open, standing before the clock to reckon every instant of time until
I should see him again. Well, from that moment my adventure ceased to
be merely amusing. I told myself how many kinds of an idiot I was, and
I thrust my head among the pillows again. I realized then, Monsieur,
what a girl's first romance means to her. I laughed at myself, of
course, as I had laughed at others often. But I could not laugh down
the certainty that the skies were bluer, the birds' songs sweeter, and
all life more lovely than it had ever been before."

"And by what professions, or what mystic rhymes or runes, did he bring
about this enchantment?"

"Not by a single sentence of protestation? An avowal would have sent
me from him without a regret. If we had not met at all after that
first look, that first day, I am convinced I should have been haunted
by him just the same! There were long minutes when we did not speak or
look at each other; but those minutes were swept with harmonies. Now,
Monsieur Loris, would you call that love, or is it a sort of
summer-time madness?"

"Probably both, Marquise; but there was a third meeting?"

"After three days, Monsieur; days when I forced myself to remain
indoors; and the struggle it was, when I could close my eyes and see
him waiting there under the trees!"

"Ah! There had been an appointment?"

"Pardon, Monsieur; you are perhaps confounding this with some
remembered adventure of your own. There was no appointment. But I felt
confident that blue-eyed ogre was walking every morning along the path
where I met him first, and that he would compel me to open the door
and walk straight to our own clump of bushes so long as I did not send
him away."

"And you finally went?"

She nodded. "He was there. His smile was like sunshine. He approached
me, but I--I did not wait. I went straight to him. He said, 'At last,
Mademoiselle Unknown!'"

"Pardon; but it is your words I have most interest in," reminded her
confessor.

"But I said so few. I remember I had some violets, and he asked me
what they were called in French. I told him I was going away; I had
fed the carp