incapable of conquering any woman, or of taking an absolute impression of
facts. I say I will do it! I am insane if I may not judge from
antecedents that my voice, my touch, my face, will draw her to me at one
signal--at a look! I am prepared to stake my reason on her running to me
before I speak a word:--and I will not beckon. I promise to fold my arms
and simply look.'

'Your task of two hours, then, will be accomplished, I compute, in about
half a minute--but it is on the assumption that she consents to see you
alone,' said the baroness.

Alvan opened his eyes. He perceived in his deep sagaciousness woman at
the bottom of her remark, and replied: 'You will know Clotilde in time.
She points to me straight; but of course if you agitate the compass the
needle's all in a tremble: and the vessel is weak, I admit, but the
instinct's positive. To doubt it would upset my understanding. I have
had three distinct experiences of my influence over her, and each time,
curiously each time exactly in proportion to my degree of resolve--but,
baroness, I tell you it was minutely in proportion to it; weighed down to
the grain!--each time did that girl respond to me with a similar degree
of earnestness. As I waned, she waned; as I heated, so did she, and from
spark-heat to flame and to furnace-heat!'

'A refraction of the rays according to the altitude of the orb,' observed
the baroness in a tone of assent, and she smiled to herself at the
condition of the man who could accept it for that.

He did not protest beyond presently a transient frown as at a bad taste
on his tongue, and a rather petulant objection to her use of analogies,
which he called the sapping of language. She forbore to remind him in