When vespers ended he returned to the house of the alcalde, where he was quartered.  Giving himself over, a willing prey, to the delights of a success long expected, laboriously sought, his mind at first could dwell on nothing else,—­he was still loved.  Solitude had nourished the love of that heart, just as his own had thriven on the barriers, successively surmounted, which this woman had placed between herself and him.  This ecstasy of the spirit had its natural duration; then came the desire to see this woman, to withdraw her from God, to win her back to himself,—­a bold project, welcome to a bold man.  After the evening repast, he retired to his room to escape questions and think in peace, and remained plunged in deep meditation throughout the night.  He rose early and went to Mass.  He placed himself close to the latticed screen, his brow touching the brown curtain.  He longed to rend it away; but he was not alone, his host had accompanied him, and the least imprudence might compromise the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes.  The organ was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the last two days was absent from its key-board.  All was chill and pale to the general.  Was his mistress worn out by the emotions which had wellnigh broken down his own vigorous heart?  Had she so truly shared and comprehended his faithful and eager love that she now lay exhausted and dying in her cell?  At the moment when such thoughts as these rose in the general’s mind, he heard beside him the voice beloved; he knew the clear ring of its tones.  The voice, slightly changed by a tremor which gave it the timid grace and modesty of a young girl, detached itself from the volume of song, like the voice of a prima donna in the harmonies of her final notes.  It gave to the ear an impression like the effect to the eye of a fillet of silver or gold threading a dark frieze.  It was indeed she!  Still Parisian, she had not lost her gracious charm, though she had forsaken the coronet and adornments of the world for the frontlet and serge of a Carmelite.  Having revealed her love the night before in the praises addressed to the Lord of all, she seemed now to say to her lover:—­“Yes, it is I:  I am here.  I love forever; yet I am aloof from love.  Thou shalt hear me; my soul shall enfold thee; but I must stay beneath the brown shroud of this choir, from which no power can tear me.  Thou canst not see me.”

“It is she!” whispered the general to himself, as he raised his head and withdrew his hands from his face; for he had not been able to bear erect the storm of feeling that shook his heart as the voice vibrated through the arches and blended with the murmur of the waves.  A storm raged without, yet peace was within the sanctuary.  The rich voice still caressed the ear, and fell like balm upon the parched heart of the lover; it flowered in the air about him, from which he breathed the emanations of her spirit exhaling her love through the aspirations of its prayer.