room, and myself for having noticed them. I should have been hurried
into I don't know what expressions of attachment to her and of
indifference towards every other individual of her sex, if she had not
prevented me by the following startling remark.

"I know to whom you give the flowers you value so much as coming from
me. It is to your next-door neighbor, who pleases you more than I do,
and whom you have known, perhaps, longer than you have me. Why didn't
you invite her, and not me, to come with you to-day? It would have been
better."

"Ah!" cried I, "do you know her? She told you about it? Why doesn't she
let me see her? Is her name Hermine?"

And almost before I knew it, I had told her the whole story of my
passion for my invisible neighbor.

Thérèse pouted, and turned her back. She put her handkerchief to her
face, and called me all sorts of hard names for having brought her there
to listen to the confession of my love for another; and turned a deaf
ear, or I thought she did, to my expostulations and my protestations
that I didn't really care for Hermine,--that it was only a passing
fancy, more curiosity than anything else,--and that I really loved no
one but her.

She began to relent at last, though I was half inclined to be sorry, for
her resentment became her even better than her good-humor.

"Well," she said, finally, "it is too tiresome to quarrel, and I will
forgive; for, although you say you have never seen Hermine,--(that is a