nger felt.

Gabriel supped with us, and we were exceedingly merry; not that I
was necessarily merry, not being sad,--indeed, I was neither the one
nor the other, but my heart was dead, and I let my body do as it
would. I remember looking hard at Gabriel once, and saying to
myself, "After all, he will admire me for this much more than I
deserve; after all, I do not love him so much as I imagined."

After supper I played some while on the piano. Gabriel and Constance
sat very far apart, but I should not have felt it had they sat
together. At ten o'clock I left off.

"Gabriel," said I, "I shall turn you out a little earlier than usual
to-night, because I want to walk as far as the park with you."

Then, for a second, feeling returned to me; there came a little
flutter of fear within me, the same I sometimes felt in childhood
when I had told a lie and, wanting to confess it, stood at my
mother's door saying, "May I come in?"

There was no moon, but the sky was not dark. We walked through the
garden in silence; once or twice I contrived to force up to my lips,
by great effort, the words I meant to speak; but then my heart beat
so fearfully that I felt my courage fail me, and I said to myself,
time after time, "Presently will do." It was not active love for
Gabriel that checked me, merely the actual physical fear that I
suppose most people experience when about to give forth words of
great import.

But just as we reached the shrubbery, I said:

"Gabriel, I have something to tell you."

"And so have I," said he, "something to tell you. But you first."

"No," I replied; "you first."

It was for one moment a great relief to think that he was about to
save me from the trial I dreaded.

We took a few more steps in silence; I was looking down, not at him.
I felt my heart beat more than ever, fear was still there, but of a
different kind; I awaited his words as one might await a death-blow.
But they did not come. Suddenly he halted, and I, too.

"Well?" said I, and I lifted my head.

There he stood, smiling at me.

"Do you remember 'Peer Gynt'?" asked he. "That was the bush."

I looked at the laurel, and then at him again.

"Why, yes," said I; "that was the bush."

His dear eyes were gazing into mine; I could not look away again.
There came a tremor over all my body; my love for him swept over me
in throbbing waves of pain; I fell towards him, stifling a cry
against his breast. And he, wrapping his arms about m