The more he thought, the less he understood.  He would not have confided in his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline.  Besides her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would bear with his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from the network of hopes and fears in which, after every interview with Jacqueline, he seemed to himself to become more and more entangled.

At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame de Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.

“Give me this quadrille,” he said to her.

And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken his arm:  “We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me.”

“This is treason!” she cried, somewhat angrily.  “We are not here to talk; I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and—­”

But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which had been called the young girls’ corner years ago.  He stood before her, preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.

“Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly.”

“Must I?  Must I, really?  Why didn’t you ask my father to do your commission?  It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one’s self.”

“That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said.  I should think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the happiness of a whole life is to depend.”

“Oh! what a grand phrase!  As if I could be essential to anybody’s happiness?  You can’t make me believe that!”

“You are mistaken.  You are indispensable to mine.”

“There! my declaration has been made,” thought Fred, much relieved that it was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.

“Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry,” said Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed toe of her little slipper; “because—­”

She stopped suddenly.  Her face flushed red.

“I don’t know how to explain to you;” she said.

“Explain nothing,” pleaded Fred; “all I ask is Yes, nothing more.  There is nothing else I care for.”

She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she said: 

“You will force me to say it?  Then, no!  No!” she repeated, as if to reaffirm her refusal.

Then, alarmed by Fred’s silence, and above all by his looks, he who had seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such as she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added: 

“Oh, forgive me!—­Forgive me,” she repeated in a lower voice, holding out her hand.  He did not take it.

“You love some one else?” he asked, through his clenched teeth.

She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink landscape painted on it to match her dress.