“Behold,” said he, “what was once your friend and cousin, your counsellor, sage, and guardian.  Behold the clay which conducted you hither, with the heart neatly but painfully extracted.  Look upon a woman’s work, Davy, and shun the sex.  I tell you it is better to go blindfold through life, to have—­pardon me—­your own blunt features, than to be reduced to such a pitiable state.  Was ever such a refinement of cruelty practised before?  Never!  Was there ever such beauty, such archness, such coquetry,—­such damned elusiveness?  Never!  If there is a cargo going up the river, let me be salted and lie at the bottom of it.  I’ll warrant you I’ll not come to life.”

“You appear to have suffered somewhat,” I said, forgetting for the moment in my laughter the thing that weighed upon my mind.

“Suffered!” he cried; “I have been tossed high in the azure that I might sink the farther into the depths.  I have been put in a grave, the earth stamped down, resurrected, and flung into the dust-heap.  I have been taken up to the gate of heaven and dropped a hundred and fifty years through darkness.  Since I have seen you I have been the round of all the bright places and all the bottomless pits in the firmament.”

“It seems to have made you literary,” I remarked judicially.

“I burn up twenty times a day,” he continued, with a wave of the hand to express the completeness of the process; “there is nothing left.  I see her, I speak to her, and I burn up.”

“Have you had many tete-a-tetes?” I asked.

“Not one,” he retorted fiercely; “do you think there is any sense in the damnable French custom?  I am an honorable man, and, besides, I am not equipped for an elopement.  No priest in Louisiana would marry us.  I see her at dinner, at supper.  Sometimes we sew on the gallery,” he went on, “but I give you my oath that I have not had one word with her alone.”

“An oath is not necessary,” I said.  “But you seem to have made some progress nevertheless.”

“Do you call that progress?” he demanded.

“It is surely not retrogression.”

“God knows what it is,” said Nick, helplessly, “but it’s got to stop.  I have sent her an ultimatum.”

“A what?”

“A summons.  Her father and mother are going to the Bertrands’ to-night, and I have written her a note to meet me in the garden.  And you,” he cried, rising and slapping me between the shoulders, “you are to keep watch, like the dear, careful, canny, sly rascal you are.”

“And—­and has she accepted?” I inquired.

“That’s the deuce of it,” said he; “she has not.  But I think she’ll come.”

I stood for a moment regarding him.

“And you really love Mademoiselle Antoinette?” I asked.

“Have I not exhausted the language?” he answered.  “If what I have been through is not love, then may the Lord shield me from the real disease.”

“It may have been merely a light case of—­tropical enthusiasm, let us say.  I have seen others, a little milder because the air was more temperate.”