With clasped hands, eyes wide open, the body slightly bent forward, as if in the act of prayer, he stood petrified with admiration, Mdlle. de Cardoville, much agitated, and her countenance glowing with emotion, remained on the threshold of the greenhouse, without entering the room.  All this had passed in less time than it takes to describe it.  Hardly had the blind been raised, than Rodin, feigning surprise, exclaimed:  “You here, madame?”

“Oh, sir!” said Adrienne, in an agitated voice, “I come to terminate the phrase which you have commenced.  I told you, that when a suspicion crossed my mind, I uttered it aloud to the person by whom it was inspired.  Well!  I confess it:  I have failed in this honesty.  I came here as a spy upon you, when your answer to the Abbe d’Aigrigny was giving me a new pledge of your devotion and sincerity.  I doubted your uprightness at the moment when you were bearing testimony to my frankness.  For the first time in my life, I stooped to deceit; this weakness merits punishment, and I submit to it—­demands reparation, and I make it—­calls for apologies, and I tender them to you.”  Then turning towards Djalma, she added:  “Now, prince, I am no longer mistress of my secret.  I am your relation, Mdlle. de Cardoville; and I hope you will accept from a sister the hospitality that you did not refuse from a mother.”

Djalma made no reply.  Plunged in ecstatic contemplation of this sudden apparition, which surpassed his wildest and most dazzling visions, he felt a sort of intoxication, which, paralyzing the power of thought, concentrated all his faculties in the one sense of sight; and just as we sometimes seek in vain to satisfy unquenchable thirst, the burning look of the Indian sought, as it were, with devouring avidity, to take in all the rare perfections of the young lady.  Verily, never had two more divine types of beauty met face to face.  Adrienne and Djalma were the very ideal of a handsome youth and maiden.  There seemed to be something providential in the meeting of these two natures, so young and so vivacious, so generous and so full of passion, so heroic and so proud, who, before coming into contact, had, singularly enough, each learned the moral worth of the other; for if, at the words of Rodin, Djalma had felt arise in his heart an admiration, as lively as it was sudden, for the valiant and generous qualities of that unknown benefactress, whom he now discovered in Mdlle. de Cardoville, the latter had, in her turn, been moved, affected, almost terrified, by the interview she had just overheard, in which Djalma had displayed the nobleness of his soul, the delicate goodness of his heart, and the terrible transports of his temper.  Then she had not been able to repress a movement of astonishment, almost admiration, at sight of the surprising beauty of the prince; and soon after, a strange, painful sentiment, a sort of electric shock, seemed to penetrate all her being, as her eyes encountered Djalma’s.