"My dear child, permit me to observe that you are not very judicious," said Giraldi, smiling. "You have half a dozen personal reasons for doing what you are doing; I pay you besides, and beg you moreover to consider me at your disposal in that matter, and you want to give the whole affair up because----" "It bores me! I can bear anything except being bored." "What is it that bores you? Explain that to me." "What is there to explain?" cried Bertalda; "it is just tiresome. If one is foolishly in love with a man, and he comes and weeps in one's arms, and one hears from others why he weeps, why should one not do him a kindness and help him to gain the woman he loves? Why, goodness me, there is nothing very hard in that; I am a good-natured creature, and if there is a little acting to be done--why one learns to cut a few capers in the ballet, and it is all the more amusing. And the acting you suggested was very pretty so far, and there is no great harm in standing as a model for a couple of days, when there is nothing to be done but to hold up your bare arms, and half the time is spent in talking too; but on the third day one ought to be able to say, So-and-so is waiting for you at such a place, and make an end of it!" "I gave you permission yesterday to hint at the real state of affairs." "Oh yes, hint!" cried Bertalda. "I told her the whole story to-day. There!" Giraldi half started from his chair, but immediately recovered himself, and asked in his quiet way: "What do you mean by the whole story, my dear child?" "Why, that I am not a model, and that I have come on Herr von Werben's account--" "Sent by Signor Giraldi----" "What! as if I would have allowed myself to be sent if I had not chosen." "Of your own accord then--so much the better! And how did she take it?" Bertalda burst into a ringing laugh. "My goodness!" cried she, "it was a farce! She did not know whether to thank me on her knees, or to trample me under her feet. I think she mentally did first one and then the other, whilst with clasped hands, and crying as I never saw a girl cry before, she stood in front of me, and then raged about the room with uplifted arms, as I never saw any one rage before either. First she called me a saint, a penitent Magdalen, I don't know what all, and a moment after a hussy, a--well, I don't know what either. It went on so for at least an hour without pause, and the end of the story was----" "That you were not to presume to return?" "Heaven forbid! To-morrow I was to return, and then it would all begin over again, and it really is too wearisome, I say, and I shall not go there again to-morrow." Bertalda got up with one last energetic tap of her boots. Giraldi remained sitting, stroking his beard. "You are right," he said; "do not go there again to-morrow, nor the next day; on the third day she will come to you."