If the speaker were an individual of any insight, or the least sensitiveness, he would get uncomfortable under the calm unconscious wonder of the eyes which regard him. His threat, for his words amount to a threat, is completely vain. The girl looks at him quietly, and for some minutes makes no reply whatever. Encouraged by this silence, he pours out a low stream of endearing epithets, cursing all the time the third party whose presence compels him to sink his voice to a whisper. At that juncture, however, the third party rises, and walks quietly from the room. Monsieur Belleisle jumps up, closes the door, and turns to Madeline with extended aims, repeating in a louder voice his volley of endearments. ‘Do not talk nonsense, Monsieur,’ is the girl’s reply. ‘I am not an angel; I am more like a devil, Mademoiselle Collemache has often said. Do not come near me--I will not be embraced. I tell you I will not marry you. Even if I liked you well enough, and I don’t, it would be too absurd.’ ‘Absurd!’ echoed the Frenchman, with indignation. ‘Yes. I am a great deal too young. It was wicked of you, Monsieur, to tempt me--to come upon me when I was in a passion, and persuade me to elope.’ ‘But I love you--ah Dieu, how much!’ ‘Don’t speak of it, Monsieur. Let me go back to Madame in peace, and implore her forgiveness--I will do so--on my knees if she wishes it. I deserve whipping--no punishment is too bad for me--I am so wicked.’ ‘Madeline,’ says the Frenchman, yielding at last to the growing fury within him, ‘let us finish this folly. I will not lose you so--no, a hundred times no. I tell you there is no escape--you will marry me to-morrow; you will, you must. If you do not, if you refuse, take care.’ And his eyes roll with a look of significance, which she does not understand. ‘Take care of what, Monsieur?’ ‘Of the world--of _me. Voilà!_ If you do not marry me, you will never marry another man! You do not know me--I am desperate. I will follow you up and down the world--I will say such things, ah, Dieu, what will I not say?--until at last you go upon your bended knees and _beg_ me to make you my wife.’ As he speaks his face is livid with fury, and he seems positively transformed. The girl looks at him in supreme astonishment and growing dislike; then she gives a little forced laugh. ‘Do not lose your temper, Monsieur. One would think you were giving a French lesson to one of the little girls.’ ‘I will give you such a lesson,’ he exclaims, ‘as you will remember. I am not a common man, and I will not be so befooled--no, no! You treat all love as nothing--at my devotion you laugh--you are cruel, but _I_ can be cruel too.--Ah, now, I do not mean that! I love you too well. You promised to marry me, and you will marry me, _n’est-ce pas_, my Madeline?’ He starts and tries to compose his features, for that moment the obnoxious third party re-enters the room, and, taking a chair, proceeds, with an air of great carelessness, to read a journal.