“I don’t know. I suppose I shall have to marry him some day.” “Lady Lossie, do you want to make me hate you?” “Don’t be foolish, Raoul. It won’t be to-morrow--nor the next day. _Freuet euch des Lebens!_” “O Florimel! what is to come of this? Do you want to break my heart? --I hate to talk rubbish. You won’t kill me--you will only ruin my work, and possibly drive me mad.” Florimel drew close to his side, laid her hand on his arm, and looked in his face with a witching entreaty. “We have the present, Raoul,” she said. “So has the butterfly,” answered Lenorme; “but I had rather be the caterpillar with a future.--Why don’t you put a stop to the man’s lovemaking? He can’t love you or any woman. He does not know what love means. It makes me ill to hear him when he thinks he is paying you irresistible compliments. They are so silly! so mawkish! Good heavens, Florimel! can you imagine that smile every day and always? Like the rest of his class he seems to think himself perfectly justified in making fools of women. _I_ want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when he thought of you first. I want you to be my embodied vision of life, that I may for ever worship at your feet--live in you, die with you: such bliss, even were there nothing beyond, would be enough for the heart of a God to bestow.” “Stop, stop, Raoul; I’m not worthy of such love,” said Florimel, again laying her hand on his arm. “I do wish for your sake I had been born a village-girl.” “If you had been, then I might have wished for your sake that I had been born a marquis. As it is I would rather be a painter than any nobleman in Europe--that is, with you to love me. Your love is my patent of nobility. But I may glorify what you love--and tell you that I can confer something on you also--what none of your noble admirers can.--God forgive me! you will make me hate them all!” “Raoul, this won’t do at all,” said Florimel, with the authority that should belong only to the one in the right. And indeed for the moment she felt the dignity of restraining a too impetuous passion. “You will spoil everything. I dare not come to your studio if you are going to behave like this. It would be very wrong of me. And if I am never to come and see you, I shall die--I know I shall.”