ever she might say
of it, had something to do with her present state. If I had been what I
ought to have been for the last six months that we had lived together,
nothing in the world, I was persuaded, could have troubled our love.

Smith was only an ordinary man, but he was good and devoted; his simple
and modest qualities resembled the large, pure lines which the eye
seizes at the first glance; one could know him in a quarter of an hour,
and he inspired confidence if not admiration. I could not help thinking
that if he were Brigitte's lover, she would cheerfully go with him to
the ends of the earth.

I had deferred our departure purposely, but now I began to regret it.
Brigitte, too, at times urged me to hasten the day.

"Why do you wait?" she asked. "Here I am recovered and everything is
ready."

Why did we wait, indeed? I do not know.

Seated near the fire, my eyes wandered from Smith to my loved one. I
saw that they were both pale, serious, silent. I did not know why, and
I could not help thinking that there was but one cause, or one secret to
learn. This was not one of those vague, sickly suspicions, such as
had formerly tormented me, but an instinct, persistent and fatal. What
strange creatures are we! It pleased me to leave them alone before the
fire, and to go out on the quay to dream, leaning on the parapet and
looking at the water. When they spoke of their life at N------, and
when Brigitte, almost cheerful, assumed a motherly air to recall some
incident of their childhood days, it seemed to me that I suffered, and
yet took pleasure in it. I asked questions; I spoke to Smith of his
mother, of his plans and his prospects; I gave him an opportunity to
show himself in a favorable light, and forced his modesty to reveal his
merit.

"You love your sister very much, do you not?" I asked. "When do you
expect to marry her off?"

He blushed, and replied that his expenses were rather heavy and that it
would probably be within two years, perhaps sooner, if his health would
permit him to do some extra work which would bring in enough to provide
her dowry; that there was a well-to-do family in the country, whose
eldest son was her sweetheart; that they were almost agreed on it, and
that fortune would one day come, like sleep, without thinking of it;
that he had set aside for his sister a part of the money left by their
father; that their mother was opposed to it, but that he would insist on
it; that a young man ca