“If it is obvious, it is obvious,” he answered evasively. “I will put it another way,” she said. “Is it for my sake that you seek it so often?” “Do I seek it often?” She put up her face quite close to his, and said mockingly: “Would you like to kiss me now, monsieur?” He drew back, with a smiling shake of the head. “I honour your good fame too well, Fanchette.” She broke into a shrill little laugh. “O, the darling, the Joseph! And yet he cannot be happy apart from me. Why, I wonder. He will never say--wherefore it behoves the poor rejected one to give him a morsel of advice.” She came close again, and perked her chin at him. “Do not think for a moment, monsieur, that I want your love; and as for my good fame, it can look after itself. But, for my company, that is another matter from the point of view of your own interests; and, if you follow my advice, you will continue to pretend to take pleasure in it, if you do not feel any.” “But I do feel pleasure, girl.” “That is well, then; and I say, let your pleasure be as obvious to others as it is to yourself.” He looked his bewilderment, and she derided him: “How slow of comprehension you are! Why, for the reason that they may think this no more than an intrigue with a femme de chambre, and so spare you the gossiping and eavesdropping which might otherwise work you mischief. O, understand me, monsieur! It is friendship which suggests this--not inclination. I do not propose to you to do more than pretend.” He looked stupefied: “I believe you are my true friend indeed,” he stammered; and she laughed, and snapped her fingers in his face, and left him feeling as if he had suddenly pulled up on the brink of an abyss. A pretended intrigue! The very thought was profanation to his love--an outrage and a shame. But it embodied a _quasi_-revelation which was even more ashaming. Fanchette knew; his affectation of artless misunderstanding of her hints and innuendoes was exposed, and finally, for the guilty sham it was. He positively blushed like a child detected in a lie. Was it a fact, too, that gossip was beginning to whisper? He had been so absorbed in his dream, had held it in truth so sacred from the world, that he had never so much as imagined that danger from without. Not while the dream lasted--the mad impossible beatitude. And was it already threatening to an end? He would not believe it--so perfect and so uplifted, risen above the reach of mortal hurts. These shadows were but conditions of its brightness. After all, what had he done but follow the path appointed him, and if by the way he had wandered into paradise, that chance was in the itinerary. He had not abused his paradise; he had simply turned its inspiration into song. In appearance, at least, there was nothing to convict him.