d the curtains. I flourished my little cane,
loitered to pick a primrose, and sang one of our devil-may-care choruses
in order to insult this English beast, and to show my love how little
I cared for danger when it stood between her and me. The creature was
abashed by my fearlessness, and so, pushing open the back door, I was
able to enter the farmhouse in safety and in honour.

And was it not worth the danger? Had all the bulls of Castile guarded
the entrance, would it not still have been worth it? Ah, the hours, the
sunny hours, which can never come back, when our youthful feet seemed
scarce to touch the ground, and we lived in a sweet dreamland of our own
creation! She honoured my courage, and she loved me for it. As she lay
with her flushed cheek pillowed against the silk of my dolman, looking
up at me with her wondering eyes, shining with love and admiration, she
marvelled at the stories in which I gave her some pictures of the true
character of her lover.

"Has your heart never failed you? Have you never known the feeling of
fear?" she asked. I laughed at such a thought. What place could fear
have in the mind of a Hussar? Young as I was, I had given my proofs.
I told her how I had led my squadron into a square of Hungarian
Grenadiers. She shuddered as she embraced me. I told her also how I had
swum my horse over the Danube at night with a message for Davoust. To be
frank, it was not the Danube, nor was it so deep that I was compelled to
swim, but when one is twenty and in love, one tells a story as best one
can. Many such stories I told her, while her dear eyes grew more and
more amazed.

"Never in my dreams, Etienne," said she, "did I believe that so brave a
man existed. Lucky France that has such a soldier, lucky Marie that has
such a lover!"

You can think how I flung myself at her feet as I murmured that I was
the luckiest of all--I who had found some one who could appreciate and
understand.

It was a charming relationship, too infinitely sweet and delicate for
the interference of coarser minds. But you can understand that the
parents imagined that they also had their duty to do. I played dominoes
with the old man, and I wound wool for his wife, and yet they could not
be led to believe that it was from love of them that I came thrice a
week to their farm. For some time an explanation was inevitable, and
that night it came. Marie, in delightful mutiny, was packed off to her
room, and I faced the old peopl