heat had been overpowering
during the day. After leaving the atmosphere of the court-yard, still
aglow with the fires of the setting sun, Julia breathed eagerly the cool
air of the woods and of the brook.

"Dieu! how delightful this is!" she said.

"But I am afraid this may be a little too delightful," said Lucan; "allow
me."

And he wound up in a double fold round her neck the floating ends of her
vail.

"What! do you value my life, then?" she said.

"Most undoubtedly."

"That's magnanimous!"

She walked a few steps in silence, resting lightly upon the arm of her
companion, and rocking, in her peculiar way, her graceful figure.

"Your good cure must take me for a species of demon," she added.

"He is not the only one," said Lucan, with ironical coldness.

She laughed a short and constrained laugh; then, after another pause, and
while continuing to walk with downcast eyes:

"You must certainly hate me a little less now; say, don't you?"

"A little less."

"Be serious, will you? I know that I have made you suffer a great deal.
Are you beginning to forgive me now?"

Her voice had assumed an accent of tenderness quite unusual to it, and
which touched Monsieur de Lucan.

"I forgive you with all my heart, my child," he replied.

She stopped, and grasping his two hands:

"True? We will not hate each other any more?" she said, in a low and
apparently timid tone. "You love me a little?"

"Thank you," said Lucan, with grave emotion; "thank you; I love you very
much."

As she was drawing him gently toward her he clasped her in a frank and
affectionate embrace, and pressed his lips upon the forehead she was
holding up to him; but at the same instant he felt her supple figure
stiffen; her head rolled back; then she sank bodily, and slipped in his
arms like a flower whose stem has suddenly been mowed down.

There was a bench within two steps; he carried her there, but after laying
her upon it, instead of affording her the required assistance, he remained
in an attitude of strange immobility before that lovely and helpless form.
A long silence followed, broken only by the gentle and monotonous ripple
of the brook. Shaking off his stupor at last, Monsieur de Lucan called out
several times in a loud and almost harsh voice:

"Julia! Julia!"

As she remained motionless still, he ran down into the ravine, took some
water in the hollow of his hand, and bathed her temples with it. In the
course of a minute or tw