You had just arrived at Paris, and a morning journal, in mentioning the
troops, and the names of the generals who appeared at the review,
related, apropos of your military exploits, many exciting details of your
escape during the war. Do you recall the applause that greeted you when
you marched past the tribunes? I saw you then for the first time, but I
should have known you among a thousand! The next day--"

"The next day," Henri interrupted, "it was my turn to applaud you. I had
been deprived a long time of the pleasures of the theatre, of which I am
very fond, and I began by going to the Comedie Francaise, where you
played, that night, the role of Helene in 'Mademoiselle de la Seigliere.'
Do you remember?"

"Do I remember! I recognized you instantly, sitting in the third row in
the orchestra."

"I had never seen you until then," Henri continued, "but that sympathetic
current was soon established, from the moment you appeared until the end
of the second piece. As it is my opinion that any officer is
sufficiently a gentleman to have the right to love a girl of noble birth,
I fell readily under the spell in which she whom you represented echoed
my own sentiments. Bernard Stamply also had just returned from
captivity, and the more enamored of you he became the more I pleased
myself with fancying my own personality an incarnation of his, with less
presumption than would be necessary for me to imagine myself the hero of
which you spoke a moment ago. After the play, a friend brought me here,
presented me to you--"

"And the sympathetic current did the rest!" added Eugenie Gontier,
looking at him tenderly. "Since then you have consecrated to me a part