ffected her. Kindness was
ready in her mind; it but lacked the touch of an occasion to effervesce
and crystallise. Now Balmile had come hitherto in a very poor plain
habit; and this day of the mistral, when his mantle was just open, and
she saw beneath it the glancing of the violet and the velvet and the
silver, and the clustering fineness of the lace, it seemed to set the
man in a new light, with which he shone resplendent to her fancy.

The high inhuman note of the wind, the violence and continuity of its
outpouring, and the fierce touch of it upon man's whole periphery,
accelerated the functions of the mind. It set thoughts whirling, as it
whirled the trees of the forest; it stirred them up in flights, as it
stirred up the dust in chambers. As brief as sparks, the fancies
glittered and succeeded each other in the mind of Marie-Madeleine; and
the grave man with the smile, and the bright clothes under the plain
mantle, haunted her with incongruous explanations. She considered him,
the unknown, the speaker of an unknown tongue, the hero (as she placed
him) of an unknown romance, the dweller upon unknown memories. She
recalled him sitting there alone, so immersed, so stupefied; yet she was
sure he was not stupid. She recalled one day when he had remained a long
time motionless, with parted lips, like one in the act of starting up,
his eyes fixed on vacancy. Any one else must have looked foolish; but
not he. She tried to conceive what manner of memory had thus entranced
him; she forged for him a past; she showed him to herself in every light
of heroism and greatness and misfortune; she brooded with petulant
intensity on all she knew and guessed of him. Yet, though she was
already gone so deep, she was still unashamed, still unalarmed; her
thoughts were still disinterested; she had still to reach the stage at
which--beside the image of that other whom we love to contemplate and to
adorn--we place the image of ourself and behold them together with
delight.

She stood within the counter, her hands clasped behind her back, her
shoulders pressed against the wall, her feet braced out. Her face was
bright with the wind and her own thoughts; as a fire in a similar day of
tempest glows and brightens on a hearth, so she seemed to glow, standing
there, and to breathe out energy. It was the first time Ballantrae had
visited that wine-seller's, the first time he had seen the wife; and his
eyes were true to her.

"I perceive your re