ysuckles that climbed
around, clouds of delicious fragrance stole and swathed me; long wafts
of faint harmony gently thrilled me. Dewy and dark and uncertain was all
beyond. I, possessed with a joyousness so deep through its contented
languor as to counterfeit serenity, forgot all my wealth of nature, my
pomp of beauty, abandoned myself to the hour.

A strain of melancholy dance-music pierced the air and fell. I half
turned my head, and my eyes met Rose. He had been there before me,
perhaps. His face, white and shining in the light, shining with a
strange sweet smile of relief, of satisfaction, of delight, his lips
quivering with unspoken words, his eyes dusky with depth after depth of
passion. How long did my eyes swim on his? I cannot tell. He never
stirred; still leaned there against the pillar, still looked down on me
like a marble god. The sudden tears dazzled my gaze, fell down my hot
cheek, and still I knelt fascinated by that smile. In that moment I felt
that he was more beautiful than the night, than the music, than I. Then
I knew that all this time, all summer, all past summers, all my life
long, I had loved him.

Some one was waiting to make his adieux; I heard my father seeking me; I
parted the curtains, and went in. One after one those tedious people
left, the lights grew dim, and still he stayed without. I ran to the
window, and, lifting the curtain, bent forward, crying,--

"Mr. Rose! do you spend the night on the balcony?"

Then he moved, stepped down, murmured something to my father, bowed
loftily to Louise, passed me without a sign, and went out. In a moment,
Lu's voice, a quick, sharp exclamation, touched him; he turned, came
back. She, wondering at him, had stood toying with the amber, and at
last crushing the miracle of the whole, a bell-wort wrought most
delicately with all the dusty pollen grained upon its anthers, crushing
it between her fingers, breaking the thread, and scattering the beads
upon the carpet. He stooped with her to gather them again, he took from
her hand and restored to her afterward the shattered fragments of the
bell-wort, he helped her disentangle the aromatic string from her
falling braids,--for I kept apart,--he breathed the penetrating incense
of each separate amulet, and I saw that from that hour, when every atom
of his sensation was tense and vibrating, she would be associated with
the loathed amber in his undefined consciousness, would be surrounded
with an atmospher