“Tell me what the ingredient is.”

“It is a secret which I cannot reveal to you.”

“Then I will never eat any of your comfits.”

Saying which, she rose, emptied her box, and filled it again with chocolate drops; and for the next few days she was angry with me, and avoided my company.  I felt grieved, I became low-spirited, but I could not make up my mind to tell her that I was eating her hair!

She enquired why I looked so sad.

“Because you refuse to take my comfits.”

“You are master of your secret, and I am mistress of my diet.”

“That is my reward for having taken you into my confidence.”

And I opened my box, emptied its contents in my hand, and swallowed the whole of them, saying, “Two more doses like this, and I shall die mad with love for you.  Then you will be revenged for my reserve.  Farewell, madam.”

She called me back, made me take a seat near her, and told me not to commit follies which would make her unhappy; that I knew how much she loved me, and that it was not owing to the effect of any drug.  “To prove to you,” she added, “that you do not require anything of the sort to be loved, here is a token of my affection.”  And she offered me her lovely lips, and upon them mine remained pressed until I was compelled to draw a breath.  I threw myself at her feet, with tears of love and gratitude blinding my eyes, and told her that I would confess my crime, if she would promise to forgive me.

“Your crime!  You frighten me.  Yes, I forgive you, but speak quickly, and tell me all.”

“Yes, everything.  My comfits contain your hair reduced to a powder.  Here on my arm, see this bracelet on which our names are written with your hair, and round my neck this chain of the same material, which will help me to destroy my own life when your love fails me.  Such is my crime, but I would not have been guilty of it, if I had not loved you.”

She smiled, and, bidding me rise from my kneeling position, she told me that I was indeed the most criminal of men, and she wiped away my tears, assuring me that I should never have any reason to strangle myself with the chain.

After that conversation, in which I had enjoyed the sweet nectar of my divinity’s first kiss, I had the courage to behave in a very different manner.  She could see the ardour which consumed me; perhaps the same fire burned in her veins, but I abstained from any attack.

“What gives you,” she said one day, “the strength to control yourself?”

“After the kiss which you granted to me of your own accord, I felt that I ought not to wish any favour unless your heart gave it as freely.  You cannot imagine the happiness that kiss has given me.”

“I not imagine it, you ungrateful man!  Which of us has given that happiness?”

“Neither you nor I, angel of my soul!  That kiss so tender, so sweet, was the child of love!”