our parents.'

"'Were I but sure you would not betray me--'

"'Would you like me to confess first? The woman I love--Ah! but you
will laugh at my folly!'

"'No, Claude! I shall not laugh. I know too well what one suffers.'

"'Especially when love is hopeless.'

"'Hopeless?'

"'Alas! I have never spoken to her. Perhaps never shall!'

[142] "'Well! as for me, I don't even know the name of him to whom my
heart is given!'

"'Ah! poor Phlipote!'

"'Poor Claude!'

"They had approached each other. The young man took the tiny hand of
his friend, pressing it in his own.

"'The woman I adore is Mademoiselle Guimard!'

"'What! Guimard of the Opera?--the fiancee of Despreaux?'"

Claude still held the hands of Phlipote, who was trembling now, and
almost on fire at the story of this ambitious love. In return she
reveals her own. It was Good Friday. She had come with her mother to
the Sainte Chapelle to hear Mademoiselle Coupain play the organ and
witness the extraordinary spectacle of the convulsionnaires, brought
thither to be touched by the relic of the True Cross. In the press of
the crowd at this exciting scene Phlipote faints, or nearly faints,
when a young man comes kindly to their aid. "She is so young!" he
explains to the mother, "she seems so delicate!" "He looked at me,"
she tells Claude--"he looked at [143] me, through his half-closed
eyelids; and his words were like a caress."--

"'And have you seen him no More?' asks Claude, full of sympathy.

"'Yes! once again. He pretended to be looking at the window of the
Little Dunkirk, over the way, but with cautious glances towards our
house. Only, as he did not know what storey we live on, he failed to
discover me behind my curtain, where I was but half visible.'

"'You should have shown yourself.'

"'Oh, Claude!' she cried, with a delicious gesture of timidity, of
shame.

"So they prattled for a long time; he talking of the great Guimard, she
of her unknown lover, scarce listening to, but completely understanding
each other.

"'Holloa!'cries the loud voice of Christopher Marteau. 'What are you
doing out there?'

"The young people arose. Phlipote linked her arm gaily in that of
Claude. 'How contented I feel!' she says; 'how good it is to have a
friend--to have you whom I used to detest, because I thought you were
in love with me. Now, when I know you can't bear me, I [144] shall be
nicely in love with you.' The soft warmth of her ar