d that, making talk to hide our
thoughts. We make a pretence of busying ourselves about whatever will
help us to keep apart from one another.

"At night, sitting here between the shadows and the dull glow of the
smouldering twigs, I sometimes think I hear the tapping I have learnt to
listen for, and I start from my seat, and softly open the door and look
out. But only the Night stands there. Then I close-to the latch, and
she--the living woman--asks me in her purring voice what sound I heard,
hiding a smile as she stoops low over her work, and I answer lightly,
and, moving towards her, put my arm about her, feeling her softness and
her suppleness, and wondering, supposing I held her close to me with one
arm while pressing her from me with the other, how long before I should
hear the cracking of her bones.

"For here, amid these savage solitudes, I also am grown savage. The old
primeval passions of love and hate stir within me, and they are fierce
and cruel and strong, beyond what you men of the later ages could
understand. The culture of the centuries has fallen from me as a flimsy
garment whirled away by the mountain wind; the old savage instincts of
the race lie bare. One day I shall twine my fingers about her full white
throat, and her eyes will slowly come towards me, and her lips will
part, and the red tongue creep out; and backwards, step by step, I shall
push her before me, gazing the while upon her bloodless face, and it
will be my turn to smile. Backwards through the open door, backwards
along the garden path between the juniper bushes, backwards till her
heels are overhanging the ravine, and she grips life with nothing but
her little toes, I shall force her, step by step, before me. Then I
shall lean forward, closer, closer, till I kiss her purpling lips, and
down, down, down, past the startled sea-birds, past the white spray of
the foss, past the downward peeping pines, down, down, down, we will go
together, till we find my love where she lies sleeping beneath the
waters of the fiord."

With these words ended the last letter, unsigned. At the first streak of
dawn we left the house, and, after much wandering, found our way back to
the valley. But of our guide we heard no news. Whether he remained still
upon the mountain, or whether by some false step he had perished upon
that night, we never learnt.

[Illustration: ALPHONSE DAUDET.]

_Alphonse Daudet at Home._

BY MARIE ADELAIDE BELLOC.

ILLUS