"I leaned against a window, which broke and the pieces of glass cut my
fingers somewhat," replied the young girl with a faint smile, adding: "It
is nothing."

"What an imprudent child you are!" said Dorsenne in his tone of friendly
scolding. "Do you know that you might have severed an artery and have
caused a very serious, perhaps a fatal, hemorrhage?"

"That would not have been such a great misfortune," replied Alba, shaking
her pretty head with an expression so bitter about her mouth that the
young man, too, ceased smiling.

"Do not speak in that tone," said he, "or I shall think you did it
purposely."

"Purposely?" repeated the young girl. "Purposely? Why should I have
done it purposely?"

And she blushed and laughed in the same nervous way she had laughed
fifteen minutes before, when she looked down into the street. Dorsenne
felt that she was suffering, and his heart contracted. The trouble
against which he had struggled for several days with all the energy of an
independent artist, and which for some time systematized his celibacy,
again oppressed him. He thought it time to put between "folly" and him
the irreparability of his categorical resolution. So he replied to his
little friend with his habitual gentleness, but in a tone of firmness,
which already announced his determination:

"I have again vexed you, Contessina, and you are looking at me with the