e could scarcely follow.
However, he finally understood; he felt himself divided between an
immense pity for her despair, and a fierce lover's joy that tightened
his throat and well-nigh strangled him.

The belfry of Cormeilles had recovered its voice; two o'clock rang out
on the air. Antoinette rose and exclaimed: "I was to meet him at the
pretty little gate that you see from here! He will have the right to be
angry if I keep him waiting."

At once she hastened towards the balustered steps that led from the
terrace to the orchard. M. Langis followed her, seeking to detain her.
"You need not see him again," said he. "I will meet him. Pray, charge me
with your explanations."

She repelled him and replied, in a voice of authority: "I wish to see
him, no one but I can say to him what I have in my heart. I command you
to remain here; I intend that he shall blame no one but me." She added
with a curl of the lips meant for a smile: "You must remember, I do not
believe yet that I have been deceived; I will not believe it until I
have read the lie in his eyes."

She hastily descended into the orchard, and, during five minutes, her
eye fixed on the gate, she waited for Samuel Brohl. Her impatience
counted the seconds, and yet Mlle. Moriaz could have wished the gate
would never open. There was near by an old apple-tree that she loved;
in the old days she had more than once suspended her hammock from one of
its arched and drooping branches. She leaned against the gnarled trunk
of the old tree. It seemed to her that she was not alone; some one
protected her.

At last the gate opened and admitted Samuel Brohl, who had a smile on
his lips. His first words were: "And your umbrella! You have forgotten
it?"

She replied: "Do you not see that there is no sunshine?" And she
remained leaning against the apple-tree.

He uplifted his hand to show her the blue sky; he let it fall again. He
looked at Antoinette, and he was afraid. He guessed immediately that she
knew all. At once he grew audacious.

"I spent a dull day yesterday," said he. "Mme. de Lorcy invited me to
dine with a crazy woman; but the night made up for it. I saw Engadine
in my dreams--the firs, the Alpine pines, the emerald lakes, and a red
hood."

"I, too, dreamed last night. I dreamed that the bracelet you gave me
belonged to the crazy woman of whom you speak, and that she had her name
engraved on it."

She threw him the bracelet: he picked it up, examined it, t