from his mouth there was such an accent of
adoration, of transport and supplication that for a moment a desire to
love filled every heart.

Olivier remembered that he had murmured that phrase himself in the park
at Roncieres, under the castle windows.

Until then he had thought it rather ordinary; but now it rose to his
lips like a last cry of passion, a last prayer, the last hope and the
last favor he might expect in this life.

Then he listened no more, heard nothing more. A sharp pang of jealousy
tore his heart, for he had just seen Annette carry her handkerchief to
her eyes.

She wept! Then her heart was awakening, becoming animated and moved, her
little woman's heart which as yet knew nothing! There, very near him,
without giving a thought to him, she had a revelation of the way in
which love may overwhelm a human being; and this revelation, this
initiation had come to her from that miserable strolling singer!

Ah, he felt very little anger now toward the Marquis de Farandal, that
stupid creature who saw nothing, who did not know, did not understand!
But how he execrated that man in tights, who was illuminating the soul
of that young girl!

He longed to throw himself upon her, as one throws himself upon a person
in danger of being run over by a fractious horse, to seize her by the
arm and drag her away, and say to her: "Let us go! let us go! I entreat
you!"

How she listened, how she palpitated! And how he suffered. He had
suffered thus before, but less cruelly. He remembered it, for the stings
of jealousy smart afresh like reopened wounds. He had first felt it at
Roncieres, in returning from the cemetery, when he felt for the first
time that she was escaping from him, that he could not control her, that
young girl as independent as a young animal. But down there, when she
had irritated him by leaving him to pluck flowers, he had experienced
chiefly a brutal desire to check her playful flights, to compel her
person to remain beside him; to-day it was her fleeting, intangible
soul that was escaping. Ah, that gnawing irritation which he had just
recognized, how often he had experienced it by the indescribable little
wounds which seem to be always bruising a loving heart. He recalled all
the painful impressions of petty jealousy that he had endured, in little
stings, day after day. Every time that she had remarked, admired,
liked, desired something, he had been jealous of it; jealous in an
imperceptible but c