not enough to be a
burden on him. The lover laid his head heavily on the shoulder of his
friend, his lips touched the heaving bosom, his hair flowed over the
white shoulders and caressed her throat. The girl, ingenuously loving,
bent her head aside to give more place for his head, passing her arm
about his neck to gain support. Thus they remained till nightfall
without uttering a word. The crickets sang in their holes, and the
lovers listened to that music as if to employ their senses on one sense
only. Certainly they could only in that hour be compared to angels who,
with their feet on earth, await the moment to take flight to heaven.
They had fulfilled the noble dream of Plato's mystic genius, the dream
of all who seek a meaning in humanity; they formed but one soul, they
were, indeed, that mysterious Pearl destined to adorn the brow of a star
as yet unknown, but the hope of all!

"Will you take me home?" said Gabrielle, the first to break the
exquisite silence.

"Why should we part?" replied Etienne.

"We ought to be together always," she said.

"Stay with me."

"Yes."

The heavy step of Beauvouloir sounded in the adjoining room. The doctor
had seen these children at the window locked in each other's arms, but
he found them separated. The purest love demands its mystery.

"This is not right, my child," he said to Gabrielle, "to stay so late,
and have no lights."

"Why wrong?" she said; "you know we love each other, and he is master of
the castle."

"My children," said Beauvouloir, "if you love each other, your happiness
requires that you should marry and pass your lives together; but your
marriage depends on the will of monseigneur the duke--"

"My father has promised to gratify all my wishes," cried Etienne
eagerly, interrupting Beauvouloir.

"Write to him, monseigneur," replied the doctor, "and give me your letter
that I may enclose it with one which I, myself, have just written.
Bertrand is to start at once and put these despatches into monseigneur's
own hand. I have learned to-night that he is now in Rouen; he has
brought the heiress of the house of Grandlieu with him, not, as I think,
solely for himself. If I listened to my presentiments, I should take
Gabrielle away from here this very night."

"Separate us?" cried Etienne, half fainting with distress and leaning on
his love.

"Father!"

"Gabrielle," said the physician, holding out to her a smelling-bottle
which he took from a table signing