"Come, now, tell me the truth, 'hand on heart,'" he went on, turning to me with a bantering air, "would it not be a great misfortune for you, to bind your life to a man already old, who has had his day, and wants nothing except to stay just where he is, while you,--Heaven knows where you would not want to run off to, as the fancy took you!" I felt uncomfortable, and was silent, not knowing very well what to say in reply. "I am not making a proposal for your hand," said he, laughing, "but, now, tell us the truth are you dreaming of such a husband, as you wander through your alleys in the evening, and would he not be a great misfortune?" "Not so great a misfortune ..." I began. "And not so great a boon, either," he finished for me. "Yes ... but I may be mistaken...." He interrupted me again. "You see?... she is perfectly right.... I like her honesty, and am delighted that we have had this conversation. I will add that--to me--it would have been a supreme misfortune!" "What an original you are! you have not changed in the least!" said Macha, leaving the terrace to order supper to be served. After her departure we were silent, and all was still around us. Then the solitary nightingale recommenced, not his abrupt, undecided notes of early evening, but his night song, slow and tranquil, whose thrilling cadence filled the garden; and from far down the ravine came for the first time a response from another nightingale. The one near us was mute for a moment, listening, then burst out anew in a rapture of song, louder and clearer than before. Their voices resounded, calm and supreme, amid that world of night which is their own and which we inhabit as aliens. The gardener went by, on his way to his bed in the orange-house, we heard his heavy boots on the path as he went farther and farther from us. Some one in the direction of the mountain blew two shrill, quick notes on a whistle, then all was still once more. Scarcely a leaf was heard to move; yet all at once the awning of the terrace puffed out slowly, stirred by a breath of air, and a more penetrating perfume stole up to us from below. The silence embarrassed me, but I did not know what to say. I looked at him. His eyes, bright in the darkness, were fixed upon me. "It is good to live in this world!" he murmured. I know not why, but at the words I sighed. "Well?" he questioned. "Yes, it is good to live in this world!" I repeated. Again the silence fell upon us, and again I felt ill at ease. I could not get it out of my head that I had hurt him, by agreeing with him that he was old; I would have liked to console him, but did not know how to set about it. "But good-bye!" he said, rising, "my mother expects me to supper. I have hardly seen her to-day." "I would have liked to play you my new sonata." "Another time," he replied coldly, at least so it seemed to me; then, moving off a step, he said with a careless gesture: "Good-bye!"