lettes.

"You were the little light!"

"You were my evening star!"

And we both began to recite the poem of those two years of our lives,
and we found that we told the same story. Louise began my sentences and
I finished hers. In disclosing our heart secrets and the mysterious
sympathy that had existed between us for two years, we interrupted each
other with expressions of astonishment and admiration. We paused time
and time again to gaze at each other and press each other's hands, as if
to assure ourselves that we were awake and it was not all a dream. And
every moment this gay and charming refrain broke in upon our ecstasy:

"So you were the brother and friend of my poverty!"

"So you were the sister and companion of my solitude!"

We finally approached in our recollections, through many windings, our
meeting upon the banks of the Seine, under the shades of Richeport.

"What seems sad to me," she said with touching grace, "is that after
having loved me without knowing me, you should have left me as soon as
you did know me. You only worshipped your idle fancies, and, had I loved
you then," she continued, "I should have been forced to be jealous of
this little lamp."

I told her what inexorable necessity compelled me to leave Richeport and
her. Louise listened with a pensive and charming air; but when I came to
speak of Edgar's love, she burst out laughing and began to relate, in
the gayest manner, some story or other about Turks, which I failed to
understand.

"M. de Meilhan loves you, does he not?" I asked finally, with a vague
feeling of uneasiness.

"Yes, yes," she cried, "he loves me to--madness!"

"He loves you, since he is jealous."

"Yes, yes," she cried again, "jealous as a--Mussulman." and then she
began to laugh again.

"Why," I again asked, "if you did not love him, did you stay at
Richeport two or three days after I left?"

"Because I expected you to return," she replied, laying aside her
childish gayety and becoming grave and serious.

I told her of my love. I was sincere, and therefore should have been
eloquent. I saw her eyes fill with tears, which were not this time tears
of sorrow. I unfolded to her my whole life; all that I had hoped for,
longed for, suffered down to the very hour when she appeared to me as
the enchanting realization of my youthful dreams.

"You ask me," she said, "to share your destiny, and you do not know who
I am, whence I come, or whither I go."

"You mistake