"How can you ask that, Bertha?"

"What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I'm going to marry? The
most unpleasant thing in the world. I should quarrel with him; I should
be jealous of him; our _menage_ would be conducted in a very ill-bred
manner. A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of
life."

"Bertha, that is not your real feeling. Why do you delight in trying to
deceive me by inventing such cynical speeches?"

"I need never take the trouble of invention in order to deceive you, my
small Tasso"--(that was the mocking name she usually gave me). "The
easiest way to deceive a poet is to tell him the truth."

She was testing the validity of her epigram in a daring way, and for a
moment the shadow of my vision--the Bertha whose soul was no secret to
me--passed between me and the radiant girl, the playful sylph whose
feelings were a fascinating mystery. I suppose I must have shuddered, or
betrayed in some other way my momentary chill of horror.

"Tasso!" she said, seizing my wrist, and peeping round into my face, "are
you really beginning to discern what a heartless girl I am? Why, you are
not half the poet I thought you were; you are actually capable of
believing the truth about me."

The shadow passed from between us, and was no longer the object nearest
to me. The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming
face looked into mine--who, I thought, was betraying an interest in my
feelings that she would not have directly avowed,--this warm breathing