"How you say all that without taking breath! any one would think it was something you had learned by heart," said Rosette, with a delicious little pout. "No; you deserve to have the phrase turned expressly for you, and you were made to pluck the virgin bloom from compliments," rejoined D'Albert. "Oho! whatever is the matter with you to-day? are you ill that you are so gallant? I fear you are dying. Do you know that when one's character suddenly changes, and without any apparent reason, it is an evil omen? Now it is a well-known fact, to all the women who have taken the pains to love you, that you are usually as morose as a man can be, and it is no less certain that at this moment you are as charming as a man can be, and inexplicably amiable.--Really, I think you are pale, my poor D'Albert: give me your arm and let me feel your pulse;" and she pushed back his sleeve and counted the pulsations with mock gravity.--"No, you are perfectly well and you haven't the slightest symptom of fever. In that case I must be furiously pretty this morning! Go and find my mirror so that I can see how far your gallantry is justified." D'Albert brought a small mirror from the toilet-table and placed it on the bed. "In truth," said Rosette, "you are not altogether wrong. Why don't you write a sonnet on my eyes, _Monsieur le Poète._ You have no excuse for not doing it. Just see how unfortunate I am! to have eyes like these and a poet like this, and to be left without sonnets just as if I were one-eyed and had a water-carrier for a lover! You don't love me, monsieur; you have never written so much as an acrostic sonnet for me.--And my mouth, what do you think of that? I have kissed you with that mouth and perhaps I will kiss you with it again, my dark-browed beauty; and upon my word, it is a favor that you hardly deserve--I am not speaking of to-day, for to-day you deserve anything;--but, to talk about something beside myself, you are incomparably fresh and comely this morning, you look like a brother of Aurora, and, although it is hardly daylight, you are already arrayed in your best clothes as if for a ball. Can it be that you have designs upon me? and do you meditate dealing an unexpected and final blow to my virtue? do you propose to make a conquest of me? But I forget that you have already done that, and that it's ancient history." "Don't joke like that, Rosette; you know that I love you." "Why, that depends. I don't know it; and you?" "I know it perfectly well, and from such symptoms that, if you should have the kindness to forbid me your door, I should try to prove it to you, and I venture to flatter myself that I should do it most triumphantly." "Not that way: however anxious I may be to be convinced, my door will remain open; I am too pretty to be shut up behind closed doors; the sun shines for one and all, and my beauty shall be like the sun to-day, if you approve."