o be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how
sensitive, how vibrating, the heart is at such moments! How quickly it
leaps up, and how intense are its emotions!

"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast lake so melancholy
and so fascinating, and a strange thing passed into me; I became
possessed with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy
dullness of my life. What! Would it never be my fate to be clasped in
the arms of a man whom I loved on a bank like this under the glowing
moonlight? Was I never then, to feel on my lips those kisses so deep,
delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem
to have been made by God for passionate embraces? Was I never to know
such ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer's night?

"And I burst out weeping like a woman who has lost her reason. I heard
some person stirring behind me. A man was intently gazing at me. When
I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:

"'You are weeping, Madame?'

"It was a young barrister who was traveling with his mother, and whom
we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.

"I was so much confused that I did not know what answer to give or
what to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.

"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectable fashion, and
began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I
had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he
understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden
he recited some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking,
seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains
themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things
ineffably sweet.

"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of
hallucination.

"As for him I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.

"He gave me his card!"

* * * * *

And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore, broke into
groans--almost into shrieks.

Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very
gently:

"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love.
And your real lover that night was the moonlight."

THE CORSICAN BANDIT

The road with a gentle winding reached the middle of the forest. The
huge pine-trees spread above our heads a mournful-