estate in
Auvergne, her father entreated me to spend a couple of months with them
in an old chateau hidden away among the mountains of Cantal. I paused
before accepting this friendly invitation. My hesitation brought me the
sweetest and most delightful unconscious confession, a revelation of the
mysteries of a girlish heart. Evelina... _Dieu!_" exclaimed Benassis;
and he said no more for a time, wrapped in his own thoughts.

"Pardon me, Captain Bluteau," he resumed, after a long pause. "For
twelve years I have not uttered the name that is always hovering in my
thoughts, that a voice calls in my hearing even when I sleep. Evelina
(since I have named her) raised her head with a strange quickness and
abruptness, for about all her movements there was an instinctive grace
and gentleness, and looked at me. There was no pride in her face, but
rather a wistful anxiety. Then her color rose, and her eyelids fell;
it gave me an indescribable pleasure never felt before that they should
fall so slowly; I could only stammer out my reply in a faltering voice.
The emotion of my own heart made swift answer to hers. She thanked me by
a happy look, and I almost thought that there were tears in her eyes.
In that moment we had told each other everything. So I went into the
country with her family. Since the day when our hearts had understood
each other, nothing seemed to be as it had been before; everything about
us had acquired a fresh significance.

"Love, indeed, is always the same, though our imagination determines
the shape that love must assume; like and unlike, therefore, is love
in every soul in which he dwells, and passion becomes a unique work in
which the soul expresses its sympathies. In the old trite saying that
love is a projection of self--an _egoisme a deux_--lies a profound
meaning known only to philosopher and poet; for it is ourself in truth
that we love in that other. Yet, though love manifests itself in such
different ways that no pair of lovers since the world began is like any
other pair before or since, they all express themselves after the same
fashion, and the same words are on the lips of every girl, even of the
most innocent, convent-bred maiden--the only difference lies in the
degree of imaginative charm in their ideas. But between Evelina and
other girls there was this difference, that where another would have
poured out her feelings quite naturally, Evelina regarded these innocent
confidences as a concession