ce I am asking the same
question of you."

Therese replied with an uneasiness she did not try to conceal:

"As for that, my dear, do not ask me. I have already told you my
opinion."

"But, darling, you have said that only men are wrong to marry. I can not
take that advice for myself."

Madame Martin looked at the little boyish face and head of Miss Bell,
which oddly expressed tenderness and modesty.

Then she embraced her, saying:

"Dear, there is not a man in the world exquisite and delicate enough for
you."

She added, with an expression of affectionate gravity:

"You are not a child. If some one loves you, and you love him, do what
you think you ought to do, without mingling interests and combinations
that have nothing to do with sentiment. This is the advice of a friend."

Miss Bell hesitated a moment. Then she blushed and arose. She had been a
little shocked.

CHAPTER XVIII. "I KISS YOUR FEET BECAUSE THEY HAVE COME!"

Saturday, at four o'clock, Therese went, as she had promised, to the
gate of the English cemetery. There she found Dechartre. He was serious
and agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy.
He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which
she did not know. She read on a signboard: Via Alfieri. After they had
taken fifty steps, he stopped before a sombre alley:

"It is in there," he said.

She looked at him with infinite sadness.

"You wish me to go in?"

She saw he was resolute, and followed him without saying a word, into
the humid shadow of the alley. He traversed a courtyard where the grass
grew among the stones. In the back was a pavilion with three windows,
with columns and a front ornamented with goats and nymphs. On the
moss-covered steps he turned in the lock a key that creaked and
resisted. He murmured,

"It is rusty."

She replied, without thought "All the keys are rusty in this country."

They went up a stairway so silent that it seemed to have forgotten the
sound of footsteps. He pushed open a door and made Therese enter the
room. She went straight to a window opening on the cemetery. Above the
wall rose the tops of pine-trees, which are not funereal in this land
where mourning is mingled with joy without troubling it, where the
sweetness of living extends to the city of the dead. He took her hand
and led her to an armchair. He remained standing, and looked at the room
which he had prepared so that she would not f