The prospect of meeting Astræa excluded all other considerations. As impediments to the flow of a current only serve to increase its force, so the opposition which the dwarf had thrown in my way gave an additional impetus to my feelings. The very publicity which our intercourse had attracted altered our relations to each other. It was no longer possible to indulge in the romantic dreams, secret looks, and stolen conversations with which we had hitherto pampered our imagination; it was necessary to act. I felt the responsibility that was thus cast upon me; and I confess that I was rather obliged to my villainous Mephistophiles than angry with him for having, as it were, brought all my wayward raptures to so immediate and decisive a conclusion. As to his anathemas and warnings, I treated them as so much buffoonery on the wrong side of the grotesque. In short, I was too much engrossed by the approaching interview, and too much intoxicated by the contemplation of the result to which it inevitably led, to think at all about that imp of darkness and his ludicrous fulminations. Astræa occupied brain and heart, and left no room for my tormentor. I fancied she looked unusually happy that morning; but not so happy as I was, not so disturbed and unsettled by happiness. She was perfectly tranquil, and it was evident that nothing had transpired in the interval to awaken a suspicion of what had occurred between me and the dwarf. She observed at once that a change had taken place in my manner. "You are in marvelously high spirits to-day," she said; "but this exuberant gayety is not quite natural to you." "High spirits! I am not conscious of it." "So much the worse," she replied; then, placing her hand upon my arm, and looking earnestly at me, she added, "something has happened since I saw you. What is it? It would be wrong, and useless as well as wrong, to affect to deny it." I had noticed at times in Astræa an air of solemnity, which would fall upon her face like a shadow, slowly receding again before its habitual, but always subdued brightness; and occasionally I imagined that I detected a sudden and brief sternness in her eyes, which conveyed an impression that she was interrogating with their concentrated rays, the concealed thoughts of the person upon whom they were directed. These were some of the outward signs of that mystery of her nature which I never could penetrate. Upon this occasion a world of latent doubts and suspicions appeared to be condensed in her look. It seemed as if in that single glance she read the whole incident which, to spare her feelings, I was so unwilling to disclose. "What do you suppose, Astræa," I inquired, "can have happened since I saw you?" "You are not candid with me," she returned. "I ask you a question, and you answer by asking me another. If nothing has happened, you can easily satisfy me; if it be otherwise, and you are silent, I must draw my own conclusions."