in hand, pressing close to one
another, listening to the beating of their hearts, mingling their love
with the sweet clearness of the summer nights, and so united that by the
simple power of their love, they would easily divine each other's inmost
thoughts. And that would endure indefinitely, in the serenity of an
indestructible affection.

Suddenly she fancied he was there--close to her; and a vague feeling of
sensuality swept over her from head to foot. She unconsciously pressed
her arms against her breast, as if to clasp her dream to her; and
something passed over her mouth, held out towards the unknown, which
almost made her faint, as if the springtide wind had given her a kiss of
love.

All at once, on the road behind the chateau, she heard someone walking
in the night, and in the rapture of her love-filled soul, in a transport
of faith in the impossible, in providential hazards, in divine
presentiment, in the romantic combinations of Fate, she thought: "If it
should be he!" She anxiously listened to the steps of the traveler, sure
that he would stop at the gate to demand hospitality. But he had passed
by and she felt sad, as though she had experienced a deception; then
after a moment she understood the feverish excitement of her hopes, and
smiled at her own folly.

A little calmer, she let her thoughts float down the stream of a more
reasonable reverie, trying to pierce the shadows of the future and
planning out her life.

She would live here with him, in their quiet chateau overlooking the
sea. She would have two children, a son for him, and a daughter for
herself, and she pictured them running on the grass between the
plane-tree and the linden, while their father and mother followed their
movements with proud eyes, sometimes exchanging looks full of love above
their heads.

She stayed dreaming until the moon had finished her journey across the
sky, and began to descend into the sea. The air became cooler. Towards
the east the horizon was getting lighter. A cock crowed in the farm on
the right, others answered from the farm on the left, their hoarse
notes, coming through the walls of the poultry-houses, seeming to be a
long way off, and the stars were disappearing from the immense dome of
the sky which had gradually whitened. The little chirp of a bird
sounded; warblings, timid at first, came from among the leaves; then,
getting bolder, they became vibrating, joyous, and spread from branch to
branch, from