she will pay handsomely. I mean my god-daughter and ward, Justine Marie Sauveur."
What is in a name?—what in three words? Till this moment I had listened with living joy—I had answered with gleeful quickness; a name froze me; three words struck me mute. The effect could not be hidden, and indeed I scarce tried to hide it.
"What now?" said M. Paul.
"Nothing."
"Nothing! Your countenance changes: your colour and your very eyes fade. Nothing! You must be ill; you have some suffering; tell me what."
I had nothing to tell.
He drew his chair nearer. He did not grow vexed, though I continued silent and icy. He tried to win a word; he entreated with perseverance, he waited with patience.
"Justine Marie is a good girl," said he, "docile and amiable; not quick—but you will like her."
"I think not. I think she must not come here." Such was my speech.
"Do you wish to puzzle me? Do you know her? But, in truth, there is something. Again you are pale as that statue. Rely on Paul Carlos: tell him the grief."
His chair touched mine; his hand, quietly advanced, turned me towards him. "Do you know Marie Justine?" said he again.
The name re-pronounced by his lips overcame me unaccountably. It did not prostrate—no, it stirred me up, running with haste and heat through my veins—recalling an hour of quick pain, many days and nights of heart-sickness. Near me as he now sat, strongly and closely as he had long twined his life in mine—far as had progressed, and near as was achieved our minds' and affections' assimilation—the very suggestion of interference, of heart-separation, could be heard only with a fermenting excitement, an impetuous throe, a disdainful resolve, an ire, a resistance of which no human eye or cheek could hide the flame, nor any truth-accustomed human tongue curb the cry.
"I want to tell you something," I said; "I want to tell you all."
