weird noise of my stifled sobs attracted the attention of some one who
was praying in the little chapel on the other side of the wall which I
had chanced to lean against. A Gothic window, with its stone mullions
surmounted by a trefoil, was exactly on a level with my head.

"Who is there?" asked some one, and I could distinguish a pale face in
the slanting rays of the moon which was just rising.

It was Edmee. On recognising her I was about to move away, but she
passed her beautiful arm between the mullions, and held me back by the
collar of my jacket, saying:

"Why are you crying, Bernard?"

I yielded to her gentle violence, half ashamed at having betrayed my
weakness, and half enchanted at finding that Edmee was not unmoved by
it.

"What are you grieved at?" she continued. "What can draw such bitter
tears from you?"

"You despise me; you hate me; and you ask why I am in pain, why I am
angry!"

"It is anger, then, that makes you weep?" she said, drawing back her
arm.

"Yes; anger or something else," I replied.

"But what else?" she asked.