"Well, I thought thou saidst it thyself," was the response, for which Marie got chased round the room with the wooden side of an embroidery frame, and, being lithe as a monkey, escaped by flying to the Countess's rooms, which communicated with those of her daughter by a private staircase. Father Bruno came up, as he often did, the same evening: but before Beatrice had time to consult him, the small Countess of Eu appeared from nowhere in particular, and put the crucial question in its crudest form. "Please, Father Bruno, what is love?" "Dost thou want telling?" inquired Bruno with evident amusement. "Please, we all want telling, because we can't agree." Bruno very rarely laughed, but he did now. "Then, if you cannot agree, you certainly do need it. I should rather like to hear the various opinions." "Oh! Eva says--" began the child eagerly; but Bruno's hand, laid gently on her head, stopped her. "Wait, my child. Let each speak for herself." There was silence for a moment, for no one liked to begin--except Marie, whom decorum alone kept silent. "What didst thou say, Eva?" "I believe I said, good Father, that I cared not for the love of any that did not hold me first and best. Nor do I." "`Love seeketh not her own,'" said Bruno. "That which seeks its own is not love." "What is it, Father?" modestly asked Doucebelle. "It is self-love, my daughter; the worst enemy that can be to the true love of God and man. Real love is unselfish, unexacting, and immortal." "But love can die, surely!" "Saint Paul says the contrary, my daughter." "It can kill, I suppose," said Margaret, in a low tone. "Yes, the weak," replied Bruno. "But, Father, was the holy Apostle not speaking of religious love?" suggested Eva, trying to find a loophole. "What is the alternative,--irreligious love? I do not know of such a thing, my daughter." "But there is a wicked sort of love." "Certainly not. There are wicked passions. But love can never be wicked, because God is love." "But people can love wickedly?" asked Eva, looking puzzled. "I fail to see how any one can _love_ wickedly. Self-love is always wicked." "Then, Father, if it be wicked, you call it self-love?" said Eva, leaping (very cleverly, as she thought) to a conclusion. "Scarcely," said Bruno, with a quiet smile. "Say rather, my daughter, that if it be self-love, I call it wicked." The perplexed expression returned to Eva's face. "My child, what is love?" "Why, Father, that is just what we want to know," said Marie. But Bruno waited for Eva's answer. "I suppose," she said nervously, "it means liking a person, and wishing for his company, and wanting him to love one." "And I suppose that it is caring for him so much that thou wouldst count nothing too great a sacrifice, to attain his highest good. That is how God loved us, my children." Eva thought this extremely poor and tame, beside her own lovely ideal.