THE GARRET WINDOW.

"Do I direct my love? It directs me.
And I could abide it if I would!...
And I would, after all, that I could not."

V. SARDOU (_Nos Intimes_).

Other days passed, and then others.

From a garret-window in the loft of the parsonage, the eye commanded a view
of the whole village. Over the roofs could be seen the house of Captain
Durand, quite at the bottom of the hill. Marcel went up there several
times, and with his gaze fixed on that white wall which concealed the sweet
object which had torn from him his tranquillity and his peaceful toil, he
forgot himself and was lost in his thoughts.

Then his eyes wandered over the verdant plain, and the length of the stream
edged with willows which wound along as far as the wood, side by side with
the little path, where often he had met with Suzanne.

Sometimes the keen April wind blew violently through the ill-closed timber
and the cracks of the roofing. It shook the joists and filled the loft with
that shrill sinister sound, which is like an echo of the lamentable
complaint of the dead, and it appeared to him that these groanings of the
tempest mingled with the groanings of his soul.

But he soon discovered that the garret-window was also a post of