he forest," whispered Susette. "I don't like the forge. It makes
me think--think of that cursed princess--and of the work that almost
lost you to me." Her blue eyes filmed as she looked up at him. "Oh,
Gaspard, I also have dreamed so much--of love--a life of love with
thee!"

There was no one there to see. Some day, perhaps, in the far distant
future, this part of the world would be thickly populated. But this was
not yet the case. Gaspard brought his bride close to his breast, smiled
gravely into her upturned face. He kissed her tears away. Sweet Susette!
She was such a child! How little she knew of life!

And yet what was that fragile, fluttering, elusive, tiny suggestion of a
regret in the back of his brain? Now he saw it; now it was gone--a
silver moth of a thought, yet one, some instinct warned him, was there
to gnaw a hole in his happiness.

He said nothing about this to Susette, of course; he chased it from his
own joy. And this joy was a beautiful, tumultuous thing.

"It's like the source of the Rhone, which I saw one time--this joy of
ours," he said with placid rapture. "All sparkling it was, and wild
cataracts, and deep places, clean and full of mystery."

"Ah, I want it to be always like this," said Susette.

Gaspard let himself go in clear-sighted thought. They were seated on a
grassy shelf that overhung the great river. The forest hemmed them in
on three sides like a wedding-bower fashioned to order; but here they
could follow the Rhone for miles--with its drifting barges, its
red-sailed shallops, its hamlets, and villages.

"Yes, ever like the Rhone," he said; "but growing, like the Rhone, until
it's broad and majestic and strong to carry burdens--"

Susette interrupted him.

"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me again. No--not like that; like you did a
while ago."

And Gaspard, laughing, did as he was bidden. But what was that silver
glint of something like a regret, something like a loss, that came
fluttering once more across the atmosphere of his thought? Susette,
though, kept him diverted. She was forever popping in upon his
reflections with innocent, childish questions; and he found this
infinitely amusing.

"Did you desire me--more than the princess?"

"Beloved, I have desired you for years."

"Did you think me more beautiful--than she?"

Again Gaspard laughed; but it set him to thinking. He liked to think. He
thought at his forge, at his meals, nights when he happened to be
awake.

"Love