bbing, and Jeanne lay
still, anxiously awaiting the revelation she had partly guessed, and
that her father had hinted at in confused words--awaiting the unveiling
of love's great secret.

There came three soft knocks at the door, though she had heard no one
come upstairs. She started violently, and made no answer; there was
another knock, and then the door-handle was turned. She hid her head
under the clothes as if a thief had got into her room, and then came a
noise of boots on the boards, and all at once some one touched the bed.
She started again, and gave a little cry; then, uncovering her head, she
saw Julien standing beside the bed, looking at her with a smile.

"Oh, how you frightened me!" she said.

"Did you not expect me, then?" he asked.

She made no answer, feeling horribly ashamed of being seen in bed by
this man, who looked so grave and correct in his evening-dress. They did
not know what to say or do next; they hardly dared to look at one
another, in this decisive hour, on which the intimate happiness of their
life depended. Perhaps he vaguely felt what perfect self-possession,
what affectionate stratagems are needed not to hurt the modesty, the
extreme delicacy of a maiden's heart. He gently took her hand and kissed
it; then, kneeling by the bed as he would before an altar, he murmured,
in a voice soft as a sigh:

"Will you love me?"

She felt a little reassured, and raised her head, which was covered with
a cloud of lace.

"I love you already, dear," she said, with a smile.

He took his wife's little slender fingers in his mouth, and, his voice
changed by this living gag, he asked:

"Will you give me a proof of your love?"

The question frightened her again, and, only remembering her father's
words, and not quite understanding what she said:

"I am yours, dear," she answered.

He covered her hand with humid kisses, and, slowly rising, he bent
towards her face, which she again began to hide. Suddenly he threw one
arm across the bed, winding it around his wife over the clothes, and
slipped his other arm under the bolster, which he raised with her head
upon it; then he asked, in a low whisper:

"Then you will make room for me beside you?"

She had an instinctive fear, and stammered out: "Oh, not yet, I entreat
you."

He seemed disappointed and a little hurt; then he went on in a voice
that was still pleading, but a little more abrupt:

"Why not now, since we have got to come to it soone