“And which will she favor?”

“Alas!  I have not read, and do not know her enough to judge,” was her answer; “but I shall hate her if she does not take him with the better soul.”

“And why?” I could hear my heart beating.

“Love is not love unless it be—­” She paused, thinking.  “Dieu! from soul to soul,” she added feelingly.

She was looking down, a white, tapered finger stirring the red petals of the rose.  Then she spoke in a low, sweet tone that trembled with holy feeling and cut me like a sword of the spirit going to its very hilt in my soul.

“Love looks to what is noble,” said she, “or it is vain—­it is wicked; it fails; it dies in a day, like the rose.  True love, that is forever.”

“What if it be hopeless?” I whispered.

“Ah! then it is very bitter,” said she, her voice diminishing.  “It may kill the body, but—­but love does not die.  When it comes—­” There was a breath of silence that had in it a strange harmony not of this world.

“’When it comes’?” I whispered.

“You see the coming of a great king,” said she, looking down thoughtfully, her chin, upon her hand.

“And all people bow their heads,” I said.

“Yes,” she added, with a sigh, “and give their bodies to be burned, if he ask it.  The king is cruel—­sometimes.”

“Dieu!” said I.  “He has many captives.”

She broke a sprig of fern, twirling it in her fingers; her big eyes looked up at me, and saw, I know, to the bottom of my soul.

“But long live the king!” said she, her lips trembling, her cheeks as red as the rose upon her bosom.

“Long live the king!” I murmured.

We dared go no farther.  Sweet philosopher, inspired of Heaven, I could not bear the look of her, and rose quickly with dim eyes and went out of the open door.  A revelation had come to me.  Mere de Dieu! how I loved that woman so fashioned in thy image!  She followed me, and laid her hand upon my arm tenderly, while I shook with emotion.

“Captain,” said she, in that sweet voice, “captain, what have I done?”

It was the first day of the Indian summer, a memorable season that year, when, according to an old legend, the Great Father sits idly on the mountain-tops and blows the smoke of his long pipe into the valleys.  In a moment I was quite calm, and stood looking off to the hazy hollows of the far field.  I gave her my arm without speaking, and we walked slowly down a garden path.  For a time neither broke the silence.

“I did not know—­I did not know,” she whispered presently.

“And I—­must—­tell you,” I said brokenly, “that I—­that I—­”

“Hush-sh-sh!” she whispered, her hand over my lips.  “Say no more! say no more!  If it is true, go—­go quickly, I beg of you!”

There was such a note of pleading in her voice, I hear it, after all this long time, in the hushed moments of my life, night or day.  “Go—­go quickly, I beg of you!” We were both near breaking down.