listen, while his eyes tried to pierce the darkness made deeper by the
foliage of poplars and aspens, and the heavy shadows of the little
wood. All was silent and solitary. Morgan ventured on his path. We
say ventured, because the young man, since nearing the Chateau des
Noires-Fontaines, revealed in all his movement a timidity and hesitation
so foreign to his character that it was evident that if he feared it was
not for himself alone.

He gained the edge of the wood, still moving cautiously. Coming to a
lawn, at the end of which was the little chateau, he paused. Then he
examined the front of the house. Only one of the twelve windows which
dotted the three floors was lighted. This was on the second floor at the
corner of the house. A little balcony, covered with virgin vines which
climbed the walls, twining themselves around the iron railing and
falling thence in festoons from the window, overhung the garden. On both
sides of the windows, close to the balcony, large-leafed trees met and
formed above the cornice a bower of verdure. A Venetian blind, which was
raised and lowered by cords, separated the balcony from the window, a
separation which disappeared at will. It was through the interstices of
this blind that Morgan had seen the light.

The young man's first impulse was to cross the lawn in a straight line;
but again, the fears of which we spoke restrained him. A path shaded
by lindens skirted the wall and led to the house. He turned aside and
entered its dark leafy covert. When he had reached the end of the path,
he crossed, like a frightened doe, the open space which led to the house
wall, and stood for a moment in the deep shadow of the house. Then, when
he had reached the spot he had calculated upon, he clapped his hands
three times.

At this call a shadow darted from the end of the apartment and clung,
lithe, graceful, almost transparent, to the window.

Morgan repeated the signal. The window was opened immediately, the blind
was raised, and a ravishing young girl, in a night dress, her fair hair
rippling over her shoulders, appeared in the frame of verdure.

The young man stretched out his arms to her, whose arms were stretched
out to him, and two names, or rather two cries from the heart, crossed
from one to the other.

"Charles!"

"Amelie!"

Then the young man sprang against the wall, caught at the vine shoots,
the jagged edges of the rock, the jutting cornice, and in an instant was
on the balc