he path that wound around the
rock.

"Without you, then!" she said, in a gentle and proud tone. And she began
ascending.

Two minutes later, they reached the plateau above the cliff, and related
to Clotilde the perils of their ascension, which explained sufficiently
their evident agitation. At least they thought so.

During the evening of this same day, Julia, Monsieur de Moras, and
Clotilde were walking after dinner under the evergreens of the garden.
Monsieur de Lucan, after keeping them company for a short time, had just
retired, under pretense of writing some letters. He remained, however, but
a few minutes in the library, where the sound of the others' voices
reached his ears and disturbed his attention. A desire for absolute
solitude, for meditation, perhaps also some whimsical and unaccountable
feeling, led him to that very ladies' walk stamped for him with such an
indelible recollection.

He walked slowly through it for some time, in the deepening shades with
which the falling night was rapidly filling it. He wished to consult his
soul, as it were, face to face, to probe like a man his mind to its utmost
depths. What he discovered there terrified him. It was a mad intoxication,
which the savor of crime further heightened. Duty, loyalty, honor, all
that rose before his passion to oppose it only exasperated its fury. The
pagan Venus was gnawing at his heart, and instilling her most subtle
poisons into it. The image of the fatal beauty was there without truce,
present in his burning brain, before his dazzled eyes; he inhaled with
avidity and in spite of himself, its languor, its perfume, its breath.

The sound of light footsteps upon the sand caused him to suspend his
march. He caught through the darkness a glimpse of a white form
approaching him.

It was she!

Without giving scarce a thought to the act, he threw himself behind the
obscure angle formed by one of those massive pillars that supported the
ruins against the side of the hill. A mass of verdure made the darkness
there more dense still. She went by, her eyes fixed upon the ground, with
her supple and rhythmical step. She walked as far as the little pond that
received the waters of the brook, stood dreaming for a few moments upon
its edge, and then returned. A second tune she went by the ruins, without
raising her eyes, and as if deeply absorbed. Lucan remained convinced that
she had not suspected his presence, when suddenly she turned her head
sl