Then, in order to strike her the more suddenly, I added with scarcely a pause: “When you become my wife.” I watched for the rapture which these magic words were surely to produce. Instead she only burst into a laugh, though it seemed to me that the laugh did not have its accustomed clearness. “It is absurd,” she said, “to make fun that way.” I insisted that I was in earnest, and repeated my declaration, which was more like an announcement than a proposal of marriage, so certain was I in advance of her consent. Could the idea of a refusal have entered my mind? I could sooner have believed that Raymonde was mad. When at last she understood, I saw the colour leave her face. She swung for a second like a boat on the sea when the wind rises, and then she fled at full speed through the open door of the ante-chamber. I scarcely heard her light tread as she descended the stairs, but I saw her cross the court without slackening her speed. In the same way two years before she had run away at the Green Fountain. Was it even then on account of my love? To me, her flight was an insult, an unjust and cruel insult, and I hastened to lay the blame for it upon the Mairieux. Did not this girl deserve to be scolded for her rudeness? And what was the meaning of this access of shyness? at the very moment when I was thinking of checking generously an outburst of gratitude! Nevertheless I loved her, and to lose her would have been intolerable. But, like the majority of lovers, I could not distinguish between love and the selfish gratification of my immediate desires. The elder Mairieux, whom I found in their drawing room, raised dismayed faces to me. Indeed, it is stretching a point to say that I was not even welcomed by my superintendent. Raymonde had told them nothing, and they were laying all the blame upon me. “Where is your daughter,” I demanded of them almost violently. “In her room--what have you said that has wounded her so? I insist upon knowing.” It was a new M. Mairieux that I, dumbfounded by this note of antagonism, saw before me. His broad experience of life, his indifference to the fashionable world, his courtesy in his business relations, the good-fellowship of his conversations with me, everything, in short, which had made our relations so agreeable, prevented me from crediting him with such firmness of character. Now, however, when his daughter was concerned, he spoke with an authority I had not anticipated. In a single word I explained the situation. “I asked her to marry me and she ran away.” M. Mairieux, accustomed as he was to the quickness of my resolves, understood at once. So much his smile told me, a smile that was quite grave, somewhat serious even, in the face of such wonderful news. He repeated my statement to his wife, who could not believe her ears, and insisted upon demanding further explanations from me without giving me an opportunity to utter a word.