LX.

TALKS.

  “When from the hills fell balmy night,
  ’Neith the dark foliage of the lofty trees,
  Starred by the moon-beams’ placid light,
  Often we wandered by the water’s side.”

  CAMILLE DELTHIL (Poesie inedite).

As he expected, she did not fail to be at the meeting-place.  She was unaware of her father’s proceedings; it was Marcel who informed her of them.  She was quite terrified; but he reassured her, and knew how to soothe her young conscience; and meeting followed meeting.  Dear and innocent meetings.  The most prudish old woman would have found nothing to find fault with.  The mystery, and their being forbidden, formed all their charm.

The Chapel of St. Anne, half-a-league distant from the village, was a charming object for a walk.  You cross the meadow as far as the little river, bordered with willows, then the chapel is reached by a hollow lane hedged with quicksets.  The sweet month of May had begun.  Three evenings a week the little nave was in festal dress, and filled with light, and perfumes and flowers.

Suzanne went no more to Mass, but she had said to her father: 

—­Will you not let me go instead and take a walk sometimes beside Saint Anne’s, to hear the music and the singing of the congregation?

—­Marianne shall accompany you, replied Durand.

They were always the last to leave the chapel, and Marcel soon rejoined them.  It was at some winding of the path that he used to meet them by chance, and every time he showed great surprise.  They walked slowly along, talking of one thing and another.  The Spring, the latest books, the good Captain’s rheumatism, were themes of inexhaustible variety.  The future sometimes attracted their thoughts, her own future; and the priest tried to cause a few fresh rays to shine into the young unquiet soul.

They talked also of the school and of friends who had gone out into the world.  One of them, a fair child with blue eyes, was her best-beloved and the fairest of the fair, and Marcel sometimes felt jealous of these warm, young-girl friendships.

He did not disdain to talk of fashions; it is one way of pleasing, and he admired aloud the elegant cut of the waist, the twig of lilac fastened to the body of her dress, and the graceful art which had twined her long jetty plaits.  She smiled and said:  “What, you too; you too; you pay attention to these woman’s trifles!”

But what matters the topic of their conversations, all they could say was not worth the joyous note which sang at the bottom of their hearts.

When they drew near the village he bowed to her respectfully, and each one returned by a different way.

Marianne was then profuse in her praises: 

-What a fine Cure! she said, so kind and civil.  If your father only knew him better!