Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the passion of Bettina for Goethe—­Fraulein Schult having told her that story simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only the great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as Goethe, and she herself was much less childish than Bettina.  But, above all, it was his genius that attracted her—­though his face, too, was very pleasing.  And she went on to describe his appearance—­till suddenly she stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that, notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she intended to portray.

“He is not like that at all,” she cried.  “He has such a beautiful smile-a smile like no other I ever saw.  And his talk is so amusing—­and—­” here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be overheard, “and I do think—­I think, after all, he does love me—­just a little.”

On what could she have founded such a notion?  Good heaven!—­it was on something that had at first deeply grieved her, a sudden coldness and reserve that had come over his manner to her.  Not long before she had read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands).  It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness, much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away.  English novels are nothing if not moral.

This story, not otherwise interesting, threw a gleam of light on what, up to that time, had been inexplicable to Jacqueline.  He was above all things a man of honor.  He must have perceived that his presence troubled her.  He had possibly seen her when she stole a half-burned cigarette which he had left upon the table, a prize she had laid up with other relics—­an old glove that he had lost, a bunch of violets he had gathered for her in the country.  Yes!  When she came to think of it, she felt certain he must have seen her furtively lay her hand upon that cigarette; that cigarette had compromised her.  Then it was he must have said to himself that it was due to her parents, who had always shown him kindness, to surmount an attachment that could come to nothing—­nothing at present.  But when she should be old enough for him to ask her hand, would he dare?  Might he not rashly think himself too old?  She must seek out some way to give him encouragement, to give him to understand that she was not, after all, so far—­so very far from being a young lady—­old enough to be married.  How difficult it all was!  All the more difficult because she was exceedingly afraid of him.

It is not surprising that Fraulein Schult, after listening day after day to such recitals, with all the alternations of hope and of discouragement which succeeded one another in the mind of her precocious pupil, guessed, the moment that Jacqueline came to her, in a transport of joy, to ask her to go with her to the Rue de Prony, that the hero of the mysterious love-story was no other than Hubert Marien.