th but a shimmering of light in its center. In
the deep silence its faintly mournful sound was softly heard.
Francezka was happy, that was plain. All else mattered little--even a
strange and hateful feeling within my own breast--I no longer loved
Gaston Cheverny.

At the moment my eyes fell upon him there came upon me a sudden fading
of the strong affection I had felt for him every moment of the
fourteen years which had passed since that night in the garden of the
Temple, when I had come near to killing him. Never had I felt so
singular and mysterious an aversion toward a man I had ever loved as
toward Gaston Cheverny on my first seeing him that night, and when he
clasped me in his arms, with all of the old affection, this aversion
became an actual repulsion. I had disguised it perfectly. I had
returned his embrace warmly. All of his kind words, his friendly
glances, I had met in kind; but a coldness not to be expressed in
speech had come over me toward Gaston Cheverny in this, our hour of
reunion. Nothing availed to warm it, not the recollection of long and
close companionship, of keen adventure, of tedious months and years,
lightened by each other's companionship, of community of tastes, of a
high mutual esteem--nothing, nothing availed. The Gaston Cheverny of
other days I still loved tenderly. This Gaston Cheverny I regarded
with entire indifference. I did not fail to remind myself that seven
years' separation, as complete as if we had inhabited different
worlds, might make this change, but I could not deny that the change
seemed wholly on my side; for, unless he were as good an actor as I,
he felt for me all the warmth of affectionate friendship which had
once been ours in common. Tormented with this singular revulsion of
feeling, I remained long in the garden, until my eye happening to fall
on the sun dial, I was reminded there was such a thing as time, and I
heard a distant bell chiming two o'clock in the morning, when I
returned to the chateau and went to bed.

Next morning the chateau was awake early, and then began, in the sweet
May weather, a round of festivities which lasted every day of our stay
at Capello. Fetes in the fields, in the May days; masquerades by
night, with water parties on the canal, where hidden music played; and
always winding up with a ball in the Diana gallery,--these were our
regular occupations. In all of these pastimes Francezka shone as
queen. In beauty, gaiety, grace and wit, she wa