others who he was,
for had not invisible messengers and unseen lips made known to her that
he was to be her own? She looked once more, just as he was turning his
head; and so the minutes passed, and it was delicious.

Suddenly she saw that he jumped from the staging, then that he walked
backwards quite a distance through the grass, as if to take a certain
position from which he could examine the window more easily. But she
could not help smiling, so evident was it that he simply wished
to approach her. He had made a firm decision, like a man who risks
everything, and now it was touching as well as comical to see that he
remained standing a few steps from her, his back towards her, not daring
to move, fearing that he had been too hasty in coming as far as he
had done. For a moment she thought he would go back again to the
chapel-window as he had come from it, without paying any attention to
her. However, becoming desperate, at last he turned, and as at that
moment she was glancing in his direction, their eyes met, and they
remained gazing fixedly at each other. They were both deeply confused;
they lost their self-possession, and might never have been able to
regain it, had not a dramatic incident aroused them.

"Oh dear! Oh dear!" exclaimed the young girl, in distress.

In her excitement, a dressing-sacque, which she had been rinsing
unconsciously, had just escaped her, and the stream was fast bearing it
away. Yet another minute and it would disappear round the corner of the
wall of the Voincourt park, under the arched vault through which the
Chevrotte passed.

There were several seconds of anxious waiting. He saw at once what had
happened, and rushed forward. But the current, leaping over the pebbles,
carried this sacque, which seemed possessed, as it went along, much more
rapidly than he. He stooped, thinking he had caught it, but took up only
a handful of soapy foam. Twice he failed. The third time he almost fell.
Then, quite vexed, with a brave look as if doing something at the peril
of his life, he went into the water, and seized the garment just as it
was about being drawn under the ground.

Angelique, who until now had followed the rescue anxiously, quite upset,
as if threatened by a great misfortune, was so relieved that she had an
intense desire to laugh. This feeling was partly nervous, it is true,
but not entirely so. For was not this the adventure of which she had so
often dreamed? This meeting on the bo