looking by turns at all the different spots, that for the last six
weeks had witnessed our looks and steps, our twofold dreams, and our
sighs. When all these had one by one faded away in the dim shade of
twilight; when there was only one corner of the horizon, to westward,
where a faint light remained,--we started up with one accord, and fled
precipitately, casting vain and sorrowing looks behind as if some
invisible hand had driven us out of this Eden, and pitilessly effaced
on our steps all the scene of our happiness and love.




XLI.


We returned home and spent a sad evening, although I was to accompany
Julie as far as Lyons on the box of her carriage. When the hand of her
little portable clock marked midnight, I retired, to let her take some
rest before morning. She accompanied me to the door; I opened it, and
said as I kissed her hand in the passage, "Good-bye, till the morrow!"
She did not answer, but I heard her murmur, with a sob, behind the
closing door, "There is no morrow for us!"

There were a few days more, but they were short and bitter, as the last
dregs of a drained cup. We started for Chambery very early in the
morning, not to show our pale cheeks and swollen eyelids in broad
daylight, and passed the day there in a small inn of the Italian
faubourg. The wooden galleries of the inn overlooked a garden with a
stream running through it, and for a few hours we cheated ourselves
into the belief that we were once more in our home at Aix, with its