dering, which is a great help
to me, for it is not everyone who can do that. Then, I adore flowers,
but I cannot keep a bouquet near me without having a terrible headache.
Violets alone I can bear, and that is surprising. But their odour seems
to calm me, and at the least indisposition I have only need to smell
them and I am at once cured."

He was enraptured while listening to her prattle. He revelled in
the beautiful ring of her voice, which had an extremely penetrating,
prolonged charm; and he must have been peculiarly sensitive to this
human music, for the caressing inflection on certain words moistened his
eyelids.

Suddenly returning to her household cares she exclaimed:

"Oh, now the shirts will soon be dry!"

Then, in the unconscious and simple need of making herself known, she
continued her confidences:

"For colouring, the white is always beautiful, is it not? I tire at
times of blue, of red, and of all other shades; but white is a constant
joy, of which I am never weary. There is nothing in it to trouble you;
on the contrary, you would like to lose yourself in it. We had a white
cat, with yellow spots, which I painted white. It did very well for a
while, but it did not last long. Listen a minute. Mother does not know
it, but I keep all the waste bits of white silk, and have a drawer full
of them, for just nothing except the pleasure of looking at them, and
smoothing them over from time to time. And I have another secret, but
this is a very serious one! When I wake up, there is every morning near
my bed a great, white object, which gently flies away."

He did not smile, but appeared firmly to believe her. Was not all she
said, in her simple way, quite natural? A queen in the magnificence of
her courtly surroundings could not have conquered him so quickly. She
had, in the midst of this white linen on the green grass, a charming,
grand air, happy and supreme, which touched him to the heart, with an
ever-increasing power. He was completely subdued. She was everything to
him from this moment. He would follow her to the last day of his life,
in the worship of her light feet, her delicate hands, of her whole
being, adorable and perfect as a dream. She continued to walk before
him, with a short quick step, and he followed her closely, suffocated by
a thought of the happiness he scarcely dared hope might come to him.

But another sudden gust of wind came up, and there was a perfect flight
into the distance of