He smiled insufferably.  He was bent on winning a parent-blest bride, an unimpeachable wife, a lady handed to him instead of taken, one of the world’s polished silver vessels.

‘Think that you are doing this for me!’ said he.  ’It is for my sake.  And now, madame, I give you back your daughter.  You see she is mine to give, she obeys me, and I—­though it can be only for a short time—­give her back to you.  She goes with you purely because it is my wish:  do not forget that.  And so, madame, I have the honour,’ he bowed profoundly.

He turned to Clotilde and drew her within his arm.  ’What you have done in obedience to my wish, my beloved, shall never be forgotten.  Never can I sufficiently thank you.  I know how much it has cost you.  But here is the end of your trials.  All the rest is now my task.  Rely on me with your whole heart.  Let them not misuse you:  otherwise do their bidding.  Be sure of my knowing how you are treated, and at the slightest act of injustice I shall be beside you to take you to myself.  Be sure of that, and be not unhappy.  They shall not keep you from me for long.  Submit a short while to the will of your parents:  mine you will find the stronger.  Resolve it in your soul that I, your lover, cannot fail, for it is impossible to me to waver.  Consider me as the one fixed light in your world, and look to me.  Soon, then!  Have patience, be true, and we are one!’

He kissed cold lips, he squeezed an inanimate hand.  The horribly empty sublimity of his behaviour appeared to her in her mother’s contemptuous face.

His eyes were on her as he released her and she stood alone.  She seemed a dead thing; but the sense of his having done gloriously in mastering himself to give these worldly people of hers a lesson and proof that he could within due measure bow to their laws and customs, dispelled the brief vision of her unfitness to be left.  The compressed energy of the man under his conscious display of a great-minded deference to the claims of family ties and duties, intoxicated him.  He thought but of the present achievement and its just effect:  he had cancelled a bad reputation among these people, from whom he was about to lead forth a daughter for Alvan’s wife, and he reasoned by the grandeur of his exhibition of generosity—­which was brought out in strong relief when he delivered his retiring bow to the Frau von Rudiger’s shoulder—­that the worst was over; he had to deal no more with silly women:  now for Clotilde’s father!  Women were privileged to oppose their senselessness to the divine fire:  men could not retreat behind such defences; they must meet him on the common ground of men, where this constant battler had never yet encountered a reverse.