Part 38

“Oh, he loves me! he loves me!” cried Pauline.

Raphael felt himself unable to say one word; he bent his head. The young girl took his hand at this; she pressed it as she said, half sobbing and half laughing:--

“Rich, rich, happy and rich! Your Pauline is rich. But I? Oh, I ought to be very poor to-day. I have said, times without number, that I would give all the wealth upon this earth for those words, ‘He loves me!’ O my Raphael! I have millions. You like luxury, you will be glad; but you must love me and my heart besides, for there is so much love for you in my heart. You don’t know? My father has come back. I am a wealthy heiress. Both he and my mother leave me completely free to decide my own fate. I am free--do you understand?”

Seized with a kind of frenzy, Raphael grasped Pauline’s hands and kissed them eagerly and vehemently, with an almost convulsive caress. Pauline drew her hands away, laid them on Raphael’s shoulders, and drew him towards her. They understood one another--in that close embrace, in the unalloyed and sacred fervor of that one kiss without an afterthought--the first kiss by which two souls take possession of each other.

“Ah, I will not leave you any more,” said Pauline, falling back in her chair. “I do not know how I come to be so bold!” she added, blushing.

“Bold, my Pauline? Do not fear it. It is love, love true and deep and everlasting like my own, is it not?”

“Speak!” she cried. “Go on speaking, so long your lips have been dumb for me.”

“Then you have loved me all along?”

“Loved you? Mon Dieu! How often I have wept here, setting your room straight, and grieving for your poverty and my own. I would have sold myself to the evil one to spare you one vexation! You are MY Raphael to-day, really my own Raphael, with that handsome head of yours, and your heart is mine too; yes, that above all, your heart--O wealth inexhaustible! Well, where was I?” she went on after a pause. “Oh yes! We have three, four, or five millions, I believe. If I were poor, I should perhaps desire to bear your name, to be acknowledged as your wife; but as it is, I would give up the whole world for you, I would be your servant still, now and always. Why, Raphael, if I give you my fortune, my heart, myself to-day, I do no more than I did that day when I put a certain five-franc piece in the drawer there,” and she pointed to the table. “Oh, how your exultation hurt me then!”

“Oh, why are you rich?” Raphael cried; “why is there no vanity in you? I can do nothing for you.”

He wrung his hands in despair and happiness and love.

“When you are the Marquise de Valentin, I know that the title and the fortune for thee, heavenly soul, will not be worth----”

“One hair of your head,” she cried.

“I have millions too. But what is wealth to either of us now? There is my life--ah, that I can offer, take it.”

“Your love, Raphael, your love is all the world to me. Are your thoughts of me? I am the happiest of the happy!”

“Can any one overhear us?” asked Raphael.

“Nobody,” she replied, and a mischievous gesture escaped her.

“Come, then!” cried Valentin, holding out his arms.

She sprang upon his knees and clasped her arms about his neck.

“Kiss me!” she cried, “after all the pain you have given me; to blot out the memory of the grief that your joys have caused me; and for the sake of the nights that I spent in painting hand-screens----”

“Those hand-screens of yours?”

“Now that we are rich, my darling, I can tell you all about it. Poor boy! how easy it is to delude a clever man! Could you have had white waistcoats and clean shirts twice a week for three francs every month to the laundress? Why, you used to drink twice as much milk as your money would have paid for. I deceived you all round--over firing, oil, and even money. O Raphael mine, don’t have me for your wife, I am far too cunning!” she said laughing.

“But how did you manage?”

“I used to work till two o’clock in the morning; I gave my mother half the money made by my screens, and the other half went to you.”

They looked at one another for a moment, both bewildered by love and gladness.

“Some day we shall have to pay for this happiness by some terrible sorrow,” cried Raphael.

“Perhaps you are married?” said Pauline. “Oh, I will not give you up to any other woman.”

“I am free, my beloved.”