and a love which
would endure unchanged as long as his life lasted.

And the tale tells how the Comte de la Foret stroked a gray beard and
said:

"Well, after all, Puysange is a good fief--"

"As if that mattered!" cried his daughter, indignantly. "My father, you
are a deplorably sordid person."

"My dear," replied the old gentleman, "it does matter. Fiefs last."

So he gave his consent to the match, and the two young people were
married on Walburga's eve, on the last day of April.

And they narrate how Florian de Puysange was vexed by a thought that was
in his mind. He did not know what this thought was. But something he had
overlooked; something there was he had meant to do, and had not done;
and a troubling consciousness of this lurked at the back of his mind
like a small formless cloud. All day, while bustling about other
matters, he had groped toward this unapprehended thought.

Now he had it: Tiburce.

The young Vicomte de Puysange stood in the doorway, looking back into
the bright hall where they of Storisende were dancing at his marriage
feast. His wife, for a whole half-hour his wife, was dancing with
handsome Etienne de Nerac. Her glance met Florian's, and Adelaide
flashed him an especial smile. Her hand went out as though to touch him,
for all that the width of the hall severed them.

Florian remembered presently to smile back at her. Then he went out of
the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced
menace. A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's
secrecy. The moon this night, afloat in a luminous, gray void, somehow
reminded Florian of a glistening and unripe huge apple.

The foliage about him moved at most as a sleeper breathes as Florian
descended eastward through the walled gardens, and so came to the
graveyard. White mists were rising, such mists as the witches of Amneran
notoriously evoked in these parts on each Walburga's eve to purchase
recreations which squeamishness leaves undescribed.

For five years now Tiburce d'Arnaye had lain there. Florian thought of
his dead comrade and of the love which had been between them--a love
more perfect and deeper and higher than commonly exists between men; and
the thought came to Florian, and was petulantly thrust away, that
Adelaide loved ignorantly where Tiburce d'Arnaye had loved with
comprehension. Yes, he had known almost the worst of Florian de
Puysange, this dear lad who, none the less, had flung hims