loved both, but each so differently!  And both loved her!  And she had to make her choice of one, and tell the prince she did love him, but . . .  Dots are the best of symbols for rendering cardisophistical subtleties intelligible, and as they are much used in dialogue, one should have now and then permission to print them.  Especially feminine dialogue referring to matters of the uncertain heart takes assistance from troops of dots; and not to understand them at least as well as words, when words have as it were conducted us to the brink of expression, and shown us the precipice, is to be dull, bucolic of the marketplace.

Sunless rose the morning.  The blanketed figures went out to salute a blanketed sky.  Drizzling they returned, images of woefulness in various forms, including laughter’s.  Alvan frankly declared himself the disappointed showman; he had hoped for his beloved to see the sight long loved by him of golden chariot and sun-steeds crossing the peaks and the lakes; and his disappointment became consternation on hearing Clotilde’s English friend (after objection to his pagan clothing of the solemn reality of sunrise, which destroyed or minimized by too materially defining a grandeur that derived its essence from mystery, she thought) announce the hour for her departure.  He promised her a positive sunrise if she would delay.  Her child lay recovering from an illness in the town below, and she could not stay.  But Clotilde had coughed in the damp morning air, and it would, he urged, be dangerous for her to be exposed to it.  Had not the lady heard her cough?  She had, but personally she was obliged to go; with her child lying ill she could not remain.  ’But, madam, do you hear that cough again?  Will you drag her out with such a cough as that?’ The lady repeated ‘My child!’ Clotilde said it had been agreed they should descend this day; her friend must be beside her child.  Alvan thundered an ‘Impossible!’ The child was recovering; Clotilde was running into danger:  he argued with the senseless woman, opposing reason to the feminine sentiment of the maternal, and of course he was beaten.  He was compelled to sit and gnaw his eloquence.  Clotilde likened his appearance to a strangled roar.  ’Mothers and their children are too much for me!’ he said, penitent for his betrayal of over-urgency, as he helped to wrap her warmly, and counselled her very mode of breathing in the raw mountain atmosphere.

‘I admire you for knowing when to yield,’ said she.

He groaned, with frown and laugh:  ‘You know what I would beg!’

She implored him to have some faith in her.

The missiles of the impassioned were discharged at the poor English:  a customary volley in most places where they intrude after quitting their shores, if they diverge from the avenue of hotel-keepers and waiters:  but Clotilde pointed out to him that her English friend was not showing coldness in devoting herself to her child.