I have seen the other face of it—­a visage scored with regrets, dead dreams, burnt passions, bald illusions, and the like, the like!—­sunless, waterless, without a flower!  It is the old volcano land:  it grows one bitter herb:  if ever you see my mouth distorted you will know I am revolving a taste of it; and as I need the antidote you give, I will not be the centaur to win you, for that is the land where he stables himself; yes, there he ends his course, and that is the herb he finishes by pasturing on.  You have no dislike of metaphors and parables?  We Jews are a parable people.’

‘I am sure I do understand . . .’ said Clotilde, catching her breath to be conscientious, lest he should ask her for an elucidation.

’Provided always that the metaphor be not like the metaphysician’s treatise on Nature:  a torch to see the sunrise!—­You were going to add?’

’I was going to say, I think I understand, but you run away with me still.’

‘May the sensation never quit you!’

‘It will not.’

‘What a night !’ Alvan raised his head:  ’A night cast for our first meeting and betrothing!  You are near home?’

‘The third house yonder in the moonlight.’

‘The moonlight lays a white hand on it!’

‘That is my window sparkling.’

‘That is the vestal’s cresset.  Shall I blow it out?’

‘You are too far.  And it is a celestial flame, sir!’

’Celestial in truth!  My hope of heaven!  Dian’s crescent will be ever on that house for me, Clotilde.  I would it were leagues distant, or the door not forbidden!’

‘I could minister to a good knight humbly.’

Alvan bent to her, on a sudden prompting: 

‘When do father and mother arrive?’

‘To-morrow.’

He took her hand.  ‘To-morrow, then!  The worst of omens is delay.’

Clotilde faintly gasped.  Could he mean it?—­he of so evil a name in her family and circle!

Her playfulness and pleasure in the game of courtliness forsook her.

‘Tell me the hour when it will be most convenient to them to receive me,’ said Alvan.

She stopped walking in sheer fright.

‘My father—­my mother?’ she said, imaging within her the varied horror of each and the commotion.

’To-morrow or the day after—­not later.  No delays!  You are mine, we are one; and the sooner my cause is pleaded the better for us both.  If I could step in and see them this instant, it would be forestalling mischances.  Do you not see, that time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away?’

She shrank her hand back:  she did not wish to withdraw the hand, only to shun the pledge it signified.  He opened an abyss at her feet, and in deadly alarm of him she exclaimed:  ‘Oh! not yet; not immediately.’  She trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of speechlessness.  ’There will be such . . . not yet!  Perhaps later.  They must not be troubled yet—­at present.  I am . . .  I cannot—­pray, delay!’