How mercurial a thing is a lover's heart! Here was one whose habits
were of solemnity and gloomy thought turned, so joyous that he could
sing aloud, alone in the midst of sunny Nature, for no better reason
than that Suzanne de Bellecour had yesternight smiled as - for some
two minutes by the clock - she had stood speaking with him.

"Presumptuous that I am," said he to the rivulet, to contradict
himself the next moment. "But no; the times are changing. Soon we
shall be equals all, as the good God made us, and - "

He paused, and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her
yesternight's kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it
became a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy
thrush into silence and sending it flying in affright across the
scintillant waters of the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke
sharply off, as, behind him, the sweetest voice in all the world
demanded the reason of this mad-sounding mirth.

La Boulaye's breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he
grew paler than Nature and the writer's desk had fashioned him.
Awkwardly he turned and made her a deep bow.

" Mademoiselle! You - you see that you surprised me!" he faltered,
like a fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books,
have learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly
when she belonged to the ranks of those whom - despite Rousseau and
his other dear philosophers - he had been for years in the habit of
accounting his betters?

" Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a