easily (for I never doubt your success, but lament the price you will
have to pay for it), you will succeed far better by giving yourself
more rest, and working by day instead of night; your cheek is quite
pale. Dumiger: now, in your boyhood, you have lines marked on your
forehead which in others are the result of pain and toil. Your eyes
have lost--"

She was about to add, "their brightness," when as though a sudden ray
of light had flashed through them, they gleamed with even more than
their wonted intelligence.

"Marguerite, Marguerite," he exclaimed, clasping her in his arms, "you
know not what you are saying. Look here!" and he rose hurriedly from
his seat and drew her toward the window; "do you see that star in the
east, how bright it is, that you can even distinguish the ray it sheds
from the gray light which breaks from behind those masses of clouds?
By that light I tell you I shall succeed in my most extravagant
expectations. How many anxious nights I have waited for that
star! Until I saw it I had no hope--now, my hope can scarcely find
expression. I am grateful to Thee, O Providence, for this revelation,
for the accomplishment of all my wishes;" and he bowed his head as
though in adoration, and almost sank on his knees.

Marguerite looked at him as if she dreaded that his brain was turned.
Dumiger interpreted that look; for what look is there that love cannot
interpret?

"No, Marguerite, I am not mad, believe me. This toil has not yet
turned my brain, though it might indeed have done so, for it is sad
and hard to labor night after night in pursuit of an object so distant