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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
page 27 of 502 (05%)
And after disposing of his doubts, which certainly would in a short
time come up again, he thought of the joy of the moment, consulting his
watch. Five o'clock! She might come now at any minute! He thought that
he recognized her afar off in a lady who was passing through the grating
by the rue Pasquier. She seemed to him a little different, but it
occurred to him that possibly the Summer fashions might have altered
her appearance. But soon he saw that he had made a mistake. She was not
alone, another lady was with her. They were perhaps English or North
American women who worshipped the memory of Marie Antoinette and wished
to visit the Chapelle Expiatoire, the old tomb of the executed queen.
Julio watched them as they climbed the flights of steps and crossed the
interior patio in which were interred the eight hundred Swiss soldiers
killed in the attack of the Tenth of August, with other victims of
revolutionary fury.

Disgusted at his error, he continued his tramp. His ill humor made the
monument with which the Bourbon restoration had adorned the old cemetery
of the Madeleine, appear uglier than ever to him. Time was passing, but
she did not come. Every time that he turned, he looked hungrily at the
entrances of the garden. And then it happened as in all their meetings.
She suddenly appeared as if she had fallen from the sky or risen up from
the ground, like an apparition. A cough, a slight rustling of footsteps,
and as he turned, Julio almost collided with her.

"Marguerite! Oh, Marguerite!" . . .

It was she, and yet he was slow to recognize her. He felt a certain
strangeness in seeing in full reality the countenance which had occupied
his imagination for three months, each time more spirituelle and shadowy
with the idealism of absence. But his doubts were of short duration.
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