her sadly, took Monsieur de Lucan's arm, and leading him
through the meandering paths of the garden:

"_Voyons, mon cher_," he said in a suppressed voice, "between you and me,
what is Julia?"

"How, my friend?"

"Yes, what sort of a woman is my wife? If you know, do tell me, I beg of
you."

"Excuse me, but it is the very question I would like to ask of you
myself."

"Of me?" said the count. "But I have not the slightest idea. She is a
Sphinx, a riddle, the solution of which escapes me completely. She both
charms and frightens me. She is peculiar, you said? She is more than that;
she is fantastic. She is not of this world. I know not whom or what I have
married. You remember that cold and beautiful creature in the Arabian
tales who rose at night to go and feast in the graveyard. It's absurd, but
she reminds me of that."

The count's troubled look, the constrained laugh with which he accompanied
his words, moved Lucan deeply.

"So, then," said the latter, "you are unhappy?"

"It is impossible to be more so," replied the count, pressing his hand
hard. "I adore her, and I am jealous--without knowing of whom and of what!
She does not love me--and yet she loves some one--she must love some one!
How can I doubt it? Look at her; she is the very embodiment of passion;
the fire of passion overflows in her words, in her looks, in the blood of
her veins! And near me, she is as cold as the statue upon a tomb!"

"Frankly, _mon cher_," said Lucan, "you seem to exaggerate your disasters
greatly. In reality they seem to amount to very little. In the first
place, you are seriously in love for the first time in your life, I think;
you had heard a great deal said about love, about passion, and perhaps you
were expecting of them excessive wonders. In the second place, I must beg
you to observe that very young women are rarely very passionate. The sort
of coolness of which you complain is therefore quite easy to explain
without the intervention of anything supernatural. Young women, I repeat,
are generally idealists; their love has no substance. You ask of whom or
of what you should be jealous? Be jealous, then, of all those vague and
romantic aspirations that torment youthful imaginations; be jealous of the
wind, of the tempest, of the barren moors, of the rugged cliffs, of my old
manor, of my words and of my ruins--for Julia adores all that. Be jealous,
above all, of that ardent worship she has avowed to her father's memory,
and