He was a lover, surely a lover:  he slid off to some chance bit of likeness to himself in every subject he discussed with her.

And she?  She speeded recklessly on the back of the centaur when he had returned to the state of phantom and the realities he threatened her with were no longer imminent.

CHAPTER V

Clotilde was of the order of the erring who should by rights have a short sermon to preface an exposure of them, administering the whip to her own sex and to ours, lest we scorn too much to take an interest in her.  The exposure she had done for herself, and she has not had the art to frame her apology.  The day after her meeting, with her eagle, Alvan, she saw Prince Marko.  She was gentle to him, in anticipation of his grief; she could hardly be ungentle on account of his obsequious beauty, and when her soft eyes and voice had thrilled him to an acute sensibility to the blow, honourably she inflicted it.

’Marko, my friend, you know that I cannot be false; then let me tell you I yesterday met the man who has but to lift his hand and I go to him, and he may lead me whither he will.’

The burning eyes of her Indian Bacchus fixed on her till their brightness moistened and flashed.

Whatever was for her happiness he bowed his head to, he said.  He knew the man.

Her duty was thus performed; she had plighted herself.  For the first few days she was in dread of meeting, seeing, or hearing of Alvan.  She feared the mention of a name that rolled the world so swiftly.  Her parents had postponed their coming, she had no reason for instant alarm; it was his violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence that she feared, as nervous people shrink from cannon:  and neither meeting, seeing, nor hearing of him, she began to yearn, like the child whose curiosity is refreshed by a desire to try again the startling thing which frightened it.  Her yearning grew, the illusion of her courage flooded back; she hoped he would present himself to claim her, marvelled that he did not, reproached him; she could almost have scorned him for listening to the hesitations of the despicable girl so little resembling what she really was—­a poor untried girl, anxious only on behalf of her family to spare them a sudden shock.  Remembering her generous considerations in their interests, she thought he should have known that the creature he called a child would have yielded upon supplication to fly with him.  Her considerateness for him too, it struck her next, was the cause of her seeming cowardly, and the man ought to have perceived it and put it aside.  He should have seen that she could be brave, and was a mate for him.  And if his shallow experience of her wrote her down nerveless, his love should be doing.