tions, made his breast swell with so much emotion that he spread
out his two arms while he flung back his head.

A large cloud passed across the sky.

"It is going towards Paris," said Louise. "You'd like to follow
it--wouldn't you?"

"I! Why?"

"Who knows?"

And surveying him with a sharp look:

"Perhaps you have there" (she searched her mind for the appropriate
phrase) "something to engage your affections."

"Oh! I have nothing to engage my affections there."

"Are you perfectly certain?"

"Why, yes, Mademoiselle, perfectly certain!"

In less than a year there had taken place in the young girl an
extraordinary transformation, which astonished Frederick. After a
minute's silence he added:

"We ought to 'thee' and 'thou' each other, as we used to do long
ago--shall we do so?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because----"

He persisted. She answered, with downcast face:

"I dare not!"

They had reached the end of the garden, which was close to the
shell-bank. Frederick, in a spirit of boyish fun, began to send pebbles
skimming over the water. She bade him sit down. He obeyed; then, looking
at the waterfall:

"'Tis like Niagara!" He began talking about distant countries and long
voyages. The idea of making some herself exercised a fascination over
her mind. She would not have been afraid either of tempests or of lions.

Seated close beside each other, they collected in front of them handfuls
of sand, then, while they were chatting, they let it slip through their
fingers, and the hot wind, which rose from the plains, carried to them
in puffs odours of lavender, together with the smell of tar escaping
from a boat behind the lock. The sun's rays fell on the cascade. The
greenish blocks of stone in the little wall over which the water slipped
looked as if they were covered with a silver gauze that was perpetually
rolling itself out. A long strip of foam gushed forth at the foot with a
harmonious murmur. Then it bubbled up, forming whirlpools and a thousand
opposing currents, which ended by intermingling in a single limpid
stream of water.

Louise said in a musing tone that she envied the existence of fishes:

"It must be so delightful to tumble about down there at your ease, and
to feel yourself caressed on every side."

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Can I live without you?]

She shivered with sensuously enticing movements; but a voice exclaimed:

"Where are you?"

"Your maid is calling you," said Freder