n of that period regarded it
as the precursor of death.

Hidden beside her father, Gabrielle endeavored to see Etienne at her
ease, and her looks expressed as much curiosity as pleasure, as much
kindliness as innocent daring. Etienne detected her in stretching her
neck around Beauvouloir with the movement of a timid bird looking out
of its nest. To her the young man seemed not feeble, but delicate; she
found him so like herself that nothing alarmed her in this sovereign
lord. Etienne's sickly complexion, his beautiful hands, his languid
smile, his hair parted in the middle into two straight bands, ending
in curls on the lace of his large flat collar, his noble brow, furrowed
with youthful wrinkles,--all these contrasts of luxury and weakness,
power and pettiness, pleased her; perhaps they gratified the instinct
of maternal protection, which is the germ of love; perhaps, also, they
stimulated the need that every woman feels to find distinctive signs in
the man she is prompted to love. New ideas, new sensations were rising
in each with a force, with an abundance that enlarged their souls; both
remained silent and overcome, for sentiments are least demonstrative
when most real and deep. All durable love begins by dreamy meditation.
It was suitable that these two beings should first see each other in the
softer light of the moon, that love and its splendors might not dazzle
them too suddenly; it was well that they met by the shores of the
Ocean,--vast image of the vastness of their feelings. They parted filled
with one another, fearing, each, to have failed to please.

From his window Etienne watched the lights of the house where Gabrielle
was. During that hour of hope mingled with fear, the young poet found
fresh meanings in Petrarch's sonnets. He had now seen Laura, a delicate,
delightful figure, pure and glowing like a sunray, intelligent as an
angel, feeble as a woman. His twenty years of study found their meaning,
he understood the mystic marriage of all beauties; he perceived how much
of womanhood there was in the poems he adored; in short, he had so long
loved unconsciously that his whole past now blended with the emotions of
this glorious night. Gabrielle's resemblance to his mother seemed to
him an order divinely given. He did not betray his love for the one in
loving the other; this new love continued HER maternity. He contemplated
that young girl, asleep in the cottage, with the same feelings his
mother had felt