e many friends. How jolly you would look in my big rocking-chair,
before the fireplace blazing with logs, and with your lap full of
chestnuts, telling me of Paris life!"

She was drinking it all in, and the blood was ripe in her cheeks.

"Think, little one," he said, "of passing our days there, you and I! I
have made you my wife, for example; I paint great pictures; you are
proud of me; everybody respects you; you have your saddle-horse and your
tea-parties; you learn to be ashamed of what you were; you are anxious
to be better--not in people's eyes only, but in mine, in your own. To do
good deeds; to sit in the church hearing good counsel; to be patted upon
the forehead by my father--his daughter!--and to call my brother your
brother also. Thus honored, contented, good, your hairs turn gray with
mine. We walk along hand in hand so evenly that we do not perceive how
old we are growing. We may forget everything but our love; that remains
when we are gone--a part of our children's inheritance."

He spoke excellent French now; to her it was eloquence. Her arms were
around his neck. He could feel her heart, beating. He had expressed what
she scarcely dared to conceive--all her holiest, profoundest hopes, her
longing for what she had never been, for what she believed she would try
to be worthy of.

"Oh, my baby," she cried, half in tears, "you make me think! I have
never thought much or often; I wish I was a scholar, as you are, to tell
you how, since we have dwelt together, something like that has come to
me in a dream. Perhaps it is because you talk to me so that I love you
so greatly. Nobody ever spoke to me so before. That is why I am angry
when your proud friend Lizzie writes to you. All that good fortune is
for her; you are to quit Paris and me. My name will be unworthy to be
mentioned to her. How shall I be in this bad city, growing old; yet I
would try so earnestly to improve and be grateful!"

"Would you, truly, sweetheart?"

She only sobbed and waited; he coughed in a dry way and unclasped her
hands.

"I pity you, poor Suzette," he said, "but it is quite impossible for us
to be more to each other. My people would never speak to me if I behaved
so absurdly. Go to bed now, and stop crying; good-night."

She staggered up, so crushed and bowed and haggard that his conscience
smote him. He could not have done a greater cruelty to one like
her--teaching her to hope, then to despair. The next day, and the next,
s