“That can never be, can it, Agatha?  We can never be more entirely sisters than we are.”

“You talk like a child, Marie.  You perhaps may never have a warmer love for each other than you now have, but that is not the question.  You must see how great would be the advantage to us all of our union being at once completed You should not now allow a phantasy of misplaced generosity to stand in the way of an arrangement which is so desirable.”

“Nay, Henri, now you are neither fair nor courteous.  You are presuming a little on the affection which I have owned in arguing that I am prevented only by what you call generosity from so immediate a marriage; that is as much as to say, that if I consulted my own wishes only, I should marry you at once.”

“It is you that are now unfair,” said Agatha.  “You know that he did not mean to draw such a conclusion.  You almost tempt me to say that he might do so, without being far wrong.  You are flirting now, Marie.”

“Heaven help me then; but if so, I have committed that sin most unconsciously, and, I believe, for the first time in my life.  I have had but one lover, and I accepted him, the very moment that he spoke to me.  I can, at any rate, have but little flirtation to answer for.”

“Alas! dearest love,” said Henri, “we are both driven to think and talk of these things in a different tone from that which is usual in the world.  If I was merely seeking to transplant you in days of peace from your own comfortable home, to be the pride and ornament of mine, I would not curtail by one iota the privilege of your sex.  I wouldn’t presume to think that you could wish yourself to give up your girlish liberty.  If you allowed me any hope, I would ascribe it all to the kindness of your disposition; your word should be my law, and though I might pray for mercy, I would submissively take my fate from your lips.  I would write odes to you, if I were able, and would swear in every town in Poitou that you were the prettiest girl, and sweetest angel in all France, Italy, or Spain.”

“Thanks, Henri, thanks; but now you have too much to do to trouble yourself with such tedious gallantries.  Is not that to be the end of your fine speech?”

“Trouble myself, Marie!”

“Yes, trouble yourself, Henri, and it would trouble me too.  It is not that I regret such nonsense.  I accept your manly love as it has been offered, and tell you that you have my whole heart.  It is from no girlish squeamishness, from no wish to exercise my short-lived power, that I refuse to do what you now ask me.  I would marry you tomorrow, were you to ask me, did I not think that I should be wrong to do so.  Am I now not frank and honest?”

Henri put his arms round her waist, and clasped her to his bosom before he answered her: 

“You are, you are, my own, own love.  You were always true, and honest, and reasonable—­so reasonable that—­”

“Ah! now you are going to encroach.”