"My dear child, whatever is the matter with you? You have been crying. Come and sit down, my poor little Renée, and let me comfort you." "Oh, Henri," she cried, "do please help me. Father came to see me yesterday, and tried all he could to make me promise to marry Pierre, and I flatly refused to have anything to do with him, and so he swore at me and vowed he would cut me off with a shilling, and turn me into the streets. I did not mind that so much, but when he told me my darling mother was an abandoned woman, which you know is a lie, and then struck me across the face, and bade me never see him again, I broke down, and I think I must have swooned away, because I didn't remember anything until I found myself on my bed. And now I am all alone in the world, and I have no one to go to in my trouble. Oh, why did my poor mother die so soon? You don't know what she was to me, Henri," and she sobbed as if her heart would break. "Renée dear, may I be your protector? Come to me and I will never leave you. God knows I love you better than my own life. Yes, a thousand times better. Will you share your lot with me, darling? I am not rich, but all that I have is yours, and what I have not shall be made up for by my love and devotion." Her heart was too full to reply. She just nestled in his arms, and their lips met in one lingering delicious kiss of ecstasy. "God bless you, my own petite Renée," he answered, "I have given you my soul, dear, and in giving you that I have given you everything." She fell into a reverie of keen delight, so keen that she felt herself becoming overwhelmed with the intoxication of love's young dream, and with a great effort she woke up to the realities of life. "But how did you contrive to come here so early? You don't generally manage to do so." "Well, to tell the truth, I knew everything that had happened, and so I hurried away from my laboratory in a fiacre, so as to be ready to help you the moment you dressed and came downstairs." "Do you mean to say that you knew that father had been storming at me and hit me?" "Yes, dear. I don't know everything, but I knew that, and I arrived here just as you entered this room, and the moment you sat down to the piano I stole in on tip-toe, and stood behind you." Renée opened her large eyes with mingled astonishment and awe, and paused in thought. "Will you always love me, Henri? Even when I am old and wrinkled?" she suddenly exclaimed, as if the thought of possessing him was too good to be true. "To the eyes of real love, dear, the loved one never becomes old or wrinkled," he replied gravely. "But will you love me very much?" "That depends on you as well, Renée," said the professor, amused at her question. "Don't you know that Italian saying which I think is attributed to Goldoni, 'Amor solo d'amor si pasce,' 'Love feeds on love and increases by exchange'? However, let us be happy for this one short hour at any rate," he added slowly with a sigh.