were silent under the faint moan of the leaves.

He pressed her in his arms and placed kisses on her eyelids. Night was
descending, the first stars were trembling among the branches. In the
damp grass sighed the frog's flutes. They went no farther.

When she took with him, in darkness, the road to the palace, the taste of
kisses and of mint remained on her lips, and in her eyes was the image of
her lover. She smiled under the lindens at the nymphs who had seen the
tears of her childhood. The Swan lifted in the sky its cross of stars,
and the moon mirrored its slender horn in the basin of the crown.
Insects in the grass uttered appeals to love. At the last turn of the
boxwood hedge, Therese and Jacques saw the triple black mass of the
castle, and through the wide bay-windows of the first story distinguished
moving forms in the red light. The bell rang.

Therese exclaimed:

"I have hardly time to dress for dinner."

And she passed swiftly between the stone lions, leaving her lover under
the impression of a fairy-tale vision.

In the drawing-room, after dinner, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles read the
newspaper, and the Princess Seniavine played solitaire. Therese sat, her
eyes half closed over a book.

The Princess asked whether she found what she was reading amusing.

"I do not know. I was reading and thinking. Paul Vence is right: