"Oh!" murmured Ermengarde, rather taken aback. "But what would you?" he added. "Mothers are like that. It is perfectly natural. She counsels me to take refuge in flight. But there are sentiments, and those of the most sacred, the most exalted--there are crises of the soul--for which flight is of no avail." "It depends----" "There are enchantments that are only deepened and intensified by absence." She had to confess that this was indubitable, and added vaguely that it was sad. "My mother declares my passion to be an infatuation, a madness----" "Perhaps it is, or a folly, or only a boy's fancy," she said, smiling softly, and then shrinking back in sudden terror. For all at once he sprang to his feet, stamping and gesticulating, his face darkened and distorted with fury, clutching his head with both hands, with blazing eyes and gestures of indescribable scorn and anger. "Boy," he shouted, "boy! What immature, what puerile, breast could endure the strain of a passion so virile, so invincible, so beyond all conception, so far transcending anything that can possibly be imagined by any female mind, as this? Such a passion as mine is not to be trifled with, Madame; it is too mighty, too terrible in its virile power. Ah! if women did but know what depths they have power to stir in male hearts, what inextinguishable fires they have power to kindle!-- Pardon me, Madame," he added, gasping, and all at once perceiving the deadly pallor and terrified gaze of Ermengarde's shrinking face, and the gestures with which she seemed to be vainly seeking some way of bodily escape from the explosion. "My transports render me ferocious, forgetful of the consideration due to your sex and weakness. There is more of the tiger than the boy in my ardent nature; my passionate adoration frightens you, as it devours, consumes, destroys me. Reassure yourself, dear Madame, I implore you. See, I am calm, penitent, desolated to have occasioned a momentary emotion of terror in a breast so gentle, in a heart so adorable, to which all homage, and consideration the most tender, is due." So speaking, he sank gracefully before her, his voice now sweet and low, his gestures supplicatory, even caressing. "Pardon me," he murmured, with clasped hands and a face all sunshine, while poor Ermengarde was white and trembling and as scared as some small and mischievous boy meddling with prohibited gunpowder and hearing it bang and go off in all directions--"pardon me. The overwhelming force of my passion is my one, my ample, excuse." She murmured faintly that there was nothing to pardon; only she hoped he would not do it again, and would he be so obliging as to rise from his penitential posture upon one knee? This he did with infinite grace, bowing low over her hand, which he appeared to kiss, wholly oblivious of the fact that the spot upon which this scene was enacted was raked by the fire of two blazing dark eyes from the office window.