it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice."

And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her
lips.

"You have not changed; you are charming as ever!"

"Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you disdained
them."

Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in
vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.

She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him,
so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext
he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the
honour, the very life of a third person.

"No matter!" she said, looking at him sadly. "I have suffered much."

He replied philosophically--

"Such is life!"

"Has life," Emma went on, "been good to you at least, since our
separation?"

"Oh, neither good nor bad."

"Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted."

"Yes, perhaps."

"You think so?" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. "Oh, Rodolphe!
if you but knew! I loved you so!"

It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their
fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of
pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she
said to him--

"How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit
of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you
about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!"

For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence
of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went
on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten--

"You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse
them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man;
you have everything to make one love you. But we'll begin again, won't
we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh,
speak!"

And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear,
like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.

He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was
caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a
golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he
kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.

"Why, you have been crying! What for?"

She burst into tears. Rodo