gladness.

"Love!" he cried, covering her hands with passionate kisses, "I am
Philip..."

She looked curiously at him.

"Come close," he added, as he held her tightly. "Do you feel the beating
of my heart? It has beat for you, for you only. I love you always.
Philip is not dead. He is here. You are sitting on his knee. You are my
Stephanie, I am your Philip."

"Farewell!" she said, "farewell!"

The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of his highly
wrought feeling had surely reached his beloved; that the heart-rending
cry, drawn from him by hope, the utmost effort of a love that must last
for ever, of passion in its ecstasy, striving to reach the soul of the
woman he loved, must awaken her.

"Oh, Stephanie! we shall be happy yet!"

A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelligence
gleamed in her eyes.

"She knows me!... Stephanie!..."

The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under his eyelids.
But all at once the Countess held up a bit of sugar for him to see; she
had discovered it by searching diligently for it while he spoke. What he
had mistaken for a human thought was a degree of reason required for a
monkey's mischievous trick!

Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on his prostrate
body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving expression to her
enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures that would have been thought
clever in a woman in full possession of her senses if she tried to mimic
her paroquet or her cat.

"Oh, my friend!" cried Philip, when he came to himself. "This is
like death every moment of the day! I love her too much! I could bear
anything if only through her madness she had kept some little trace of
womanhood. But, day after day, to see her like a wild animal, not even a
sense of modesty left, to see her--"

"So you must have a theatrical madness, must you!" said the doctor
sharply, "and your prejudices are stronger than your lover's devotion?
What, monsieur! I resign to you the sad pleasure of giving my niece her
food, and the enjoyment of her playtime; I have kept for myself nothing
but the most burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are asleep,
I--Go, monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary hermitage; I
can live with my little darling; I understand her disease; I study her
movements; I know her secrets. Some day you shall thank me."

The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined to see only
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