till dawn.

When he awoke he inspected his strange retreat. He was in a large hall,
two hundred feet long, and some fifty feet high and broad; this chamber
was entered by a small orifice of no great length, through which he had
passed on the preceding night; it was warm, and dry except where the
stream of which Hilda had spoken trickled through to the sea. It was the
fissure now known as the Creux Mahie, and to which an easy access has
been arranged for the benefit of the curious. Here Jean passed three
months. Hilda frequently visited him, and always kept him supplied with
food; she warned him also when he might safely roam on the cliffs above.
There was no obstacle to her visits, even when they extended to a
considerable length, as the mother seemed always to be satisfied as to
her absences when Tita accompanied her; and the latter, whose
infirmities prevented her from descending, had no means of shortening
the interviews.

Thus the lovers had opportunity to study each other's characters. The
maiden's pure heart knew no distrust, and Jean was faithful and
chivalrous as Sir Galahad. They spoke not always of love: words were
unnecessary to explain what every look betokened. Jean found her skilled
in strange, mystical, lore, but ignorant of all that sways and rules
mankind. The history of the selfish struggles of human interests and
passions was to her a sealed book. She had been carefully shrouded from
the knowledge of evil; but, in order to protect her in the rough
turbulent little world in which she lived, it had been necessary to keep
her from association with her countrymen, and so she had never mingled
with them except under the charge of her mother, in whose presence the
fiercest were submissive. Jean, therefore, in speaking to her of family
intercourse, of the intermingling of members of the household, of
bright chat with friends, opened up to her views of life of which she
had formed no conception. Then he told her of his own people; described
the three generations living under one roof; depicted the daily round,
the care of the old and the young, the work, the return of the workers
to their wives, sisters, and children, the love of the mothers for their
infants, the reverence for age, the strong mutual affection of husband
and wife, brother and sister. To these descriptions she listened with a
happy smile, the mission of woman dawning on her; and many were the
questions she asked, till she seemed to have mast