“And you,” I said, the passion that I could not conceal trembling in my voice; “and you—­what are you, poet, or painter, or musician, that you know and reason of all these things?”

She laughed with a sudden change of mood, and shook her head.

“I am a woman,” said she.  “Simply a woman—­no more.  One of the inferior sex; and, as I told you long ago, only half civilized.”

“You are unlike every other woman!”

“Possibly, because I am more useless.  Strange as it may seem, do you know I love art better than sewing, or gossip, or dress; and hold my liberty to be a dower more precious than either beauty or riches?  And yet—­I am a woman!”

“The wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best!”

“By no means.  You are comparing me with Eve; but I am not in the least like Eve, I assure you.  She was an excellent housewife, and, if we may believe Milton, knew how to prepare ‘dulcet creams,’ and all sorts of Paradisaical dainties for her husband’s dinner.  I, on the contrary, could not make a cream if Adam’s life depended on it.”

“Eh bien! of the theology of creams I know nothing.  I only know that Eve was the first and fairest of her sex, and that you are as wise as you are beautiful.”

“Nay, that is what Titania said to the ass,” laughed Hortense.  “Your compliments become equivocal, fellow-student.  But hush! what hour is that?”

She stood with uplifted finger.  The air was keen, and over the silence of the house-tops chimed the church-clocks—­Two.

“It is late, and cold,” said she, drawing her cloak more closely round her.

“Not later than you usually sit up,” I replied.  “Don’t go yet.  ’Tis now the very witching hour of night, when churchyards yawn—­”

“I beg your pardon,” she interrupted.  “The churchyards have done yawning by this time, and, like other respectable citizens, are sound asleep.  Let us follow their example.  Good-night.”

“Good-night,” I replied, reluctantly; but almost before I had said it, she was gone.

After this, as the winter wore away, and spring drew on, Hortense’s balcony became once more a garden, and she used to attend to her flowers every evening.  She always found me on my balcony when she came out, and soon our open-air meetings became such an established fact that, instead of parting with “good-night,” we said “au revoir—­till to-morrow.”  At these times we talked of many things; sometimes of subjects abstract and mystical—­of futurity, of death, of the spiritual life—­but oftenest of Art in its manifold developments.  And sometimes our speculations wandered on into the late hours of the night.

And yet, for all our talking and all our community of tastes, we became not one jot more intimate.  I still loved in silence—­she still lived in a world apart.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THERMOPYLAE.