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
