"Monsieur Michel! Monsieur Michel!" cried Mary, more astonished than angry; "what are you doing?"
The young girl rose quickly. Michel saw that he had gone too far and must now go farther still and say all. It was he who now took Mary's posture; that is, he fell upon his knees and again took the hand which had escaped him. It is true that hand made no effort to avoid his clasp.
"Oh! can I have offended you?" he cried. "If that were so I should be most unhappy, and ask pardon of you on my knees."
"Monsieur Michel!" began the young girl, without knowing what she meant to say.
But the baron, afraid that the little hand might be snatched away from him, folded it in both his own; and as, on his side, he did not very well know what he was saying, he continued:--
"If I have abused your goodness, mademoiselle, tell me,--I implore you,--tell me that you are not angry with me."
"I will say so, monsieur, when you rise," said Mary, making a feeble effort to withdraw her hand. But the effort was so feeble it had no other result than to show Michel its captivity was not altogether forced upon her.
"No," said the young baron, under the influence of a growing ardor caused by the change from hope into something that was almost certainty,--"no, leave me at your feet. Oh! if you only knew how many times, since I have known you, I have dreamed of the moment when I should kneel thus at your feet; if you knew how that dream, mere dream as it was, gave me the sweetest sensations, the most delightful agony, you would let me enjoy the happiness which is at this moment a reality."
"But, Monsieur Michel," replied Mary, in a voice of increasing emotion as she spoke, for she felt she had reached the moment when she could have no further doubt as to the nature of his affection for her,--"Monsieur Michel, we should not kneel except to God and to the saints."
"I know not to whom we ought to kneel, nor why I kneel to you," said the young man. "What I feel is far beyond all that I ever felt before,--greater than my affection for my mother, so great that I do not know where to place or what to call the sentiment that leads me to adore you. It is something which belongs to the reverence you speak of, which we offer to God and to the saints. For me you are the whole creation; in adoring you it seems to me that I adore the universe itself."