Methodically, according to his habit, he jotted down the hours of the trains, the hotel mentioned by Clotilde, the address of her father; he looked to his card-case, his writing materials, his notes upon Swiss law; considering that the scene would be in Switzerland, and he was a lawyer bent on acting within and up to the measure of the law as well as pleading eloquently.  The desire to wing a telegram to her he thought it wise to repress, and he found himself in consequence composing verses, turgid enough, even to his own judgement.  Poets would have failed at such a time, and he was not one, but an orator enamoured.  He was a wild man, cased in the knowledge of jurisprudence, and wishing to enter the ranks of the soberly blissful.  These he could imagine that he complimented by the wish.  Then why should he doubt of his fortune?  He did not.

The night passed, the morning came, and carried him on his journey.  Late in the afternoon he alighted at the hotel he called Clotilde’s.  A letter was handed to him.  His eyes all over the page caught the note of it for her beginning of the battle and despair at the first repulse.  ’And now my turn!’ said he, not overjoyously.  The words Jew and demagogue and baroness, quoted in the letter, were old missiles hurling again at him.  But Clotilde’s parents were yet to learn that this Jew, demagogue, and champion of an injured lady, was a gentleman respectful to their legal and natural claims upon their child while maintaining his own:  they were to know him and change their tone.

As he was reading the letter upstairs by sentences, his door opened at the answer to a tap.  He started; his face was a shield’s welcome to the birdlike applicant for admission.  Clotilde stood hesitating.

He sent the introducing waiter speeding on his most kellnerish legs, and drew her in.

‘Alvan, I have come.’

She was like a bird in his hands, palpitating to extinction.

He bent over her:  ‘What has happened?’

Trembling, and very pale, hard in her throat she said, ‘The worst.’

‘You have spoken to them both subsequent to this?’ he shook the letter.

‘It is hopeless.’

‘Both to father and mother?’

’Both.  They will not hear your name; they will not hear me speak.  I repeat, it is past all hope, all chance of moving them.  They hate—­hate you, hate me for thinking of you.  I had no choice; I wrote at once and followed my letter; I ran through the streets; I pant for want of breath, not want of courage.  I prove I have it, Alvan; I have done all I can do.

She was enfolded; she sank on the nest, dropping her eyelids.

But he said nothing.  She looked up at him.  Her strained pale eyes provoked a closer embrace.

‘This would be the home for you if we were flying,’ said he, glancing round at the room, with a sensation like a shudder, ’Tell me what there is to be told.’