"There, you shall have another miniature glass--a fairy glass--of
noyau," she said gaily. In this volatile creature, the funereal gloom of
the moment before, and the suspense of an adventure on which all her
future was staked, disappeared in a moment. She ran and returned with
another tiny glass, which, with an eloquent or tender little speech, I
placed to my lips and sipped.

I kissed her hand, I kissed her lips, I gazed in her beautiful eyes, and
kissed her again unresisting.

"You call me Richard, by what name am I to call my beautiful divinity?"
I asked.

"You call me Eugenie, it is my name. Let us be quite real; that is, if
you love as entirely as I do."

"Eugenie!" I exclaimed, and broke into a new rapture upon the name.

It ended by my telling her how impatient I was to set out upon our
journey; and, as I spoke, suddenly an odd sensation overcame me. It was
not in the slightest degree like faintness. I can find no phrase to
describe it, but a sudden constraint of the brain; it was as if the
membrane in which it lies, if there be such a thing, contracted, and
became inflexible.

"Dear Richard! what is the matter?" she exclaimed, with terror in her
looks. "Good Heavens! are you ill? I conjure you, sit down; sit in this
chair." She almost forced me into one; I was in no condition to offer
the least resistance. I recognized but too truly the sensations that
supervened. I was lying back in the chair in which I sat, without the