“’My dear child, you have been through this valley a score of times without seeming to admire it!’ she remarked after a somewhat too enthusiastic phrase from Evelina.

“’No doubt it was because I was not old enough to understand beauty of this kind, mother.’

“Forgive me for dwelling on this trifle, which can have no charm for you, captain; but the simple words brought me an indescribable joy, which had its source in the glance directed towards me as she spoke.  So some village lighted by sunrise, some ivy-covered ruin which we had seen together, memories of outward and visible things, served to deepen and strengthen the impressions of our happiness; they seemed to be landmarks on the way through which we were passing towards a bright future that lay before us.

“We reached the chateau belonging to her family, where I spent about six weeks, the only time in my life during which Heaven has vouchsafed complete happiness to me.  I enjoyed pleasures unknown to town-dwellers —­all the happiness which two lovers find in living beneath the same roof, an anticipation of the life they will spend together.  To stroll through the fields, to be alone together at times if we wished it, to look over an old water-mill, to sit beneath a tree in some lovely glen among the hills, the lovers’ talks, the sweet confidences drawn forth by which each made some progress day by day in the other’s heart.  Ah! sir, the out-of-door life, the beauty of earth and heaven, is a perfect accompaniment to the perfect happiness of the soul!  To mingle our careless talk with the song of the birds among the dewy leaves, to smile at each other as we gazed on the sky, to turn our steps slowly homewards at the sound of the bell that always rings too soon, to admire together some little detail in the landscape, to watch the fitful movements of an insect, to look closely at a gleaming demoiselle fly—­the delicate creature that resembles an innocent and loving girl; in such ways as these are not one’s thoughts drawn daily a little higher?  The memories of my forty days of happiness have in a manner colored all the rest of my life, memories that are all the fairer and fill the greater space in my thoughts because since then it has been my fate never to be understood.  To this day there are scenes of no special interest for a casual observer, but full of bitter significance for a broken heart, which recall those vanished days, and the love that is not forgotten yet.

“I do not know whether you noticed the effect of the sunset light on the cottage where little Jacques lives?  Everything shone so brightly in the fiery rays of the sun, and then all at once the whole landscape grew dark and dreary.  That sudden change was like the change in my own life at this time.  I received from her the first, the sole and sublime token of love that an innocent girl may give; the more secretly it is given, the closer is the bond it forms, the sweet promise of love, a fragment of the language spoken in a fairer world than this.  Sure, therefore, of being beloved, I vowed that I would confess everything at once, that I would have no secrets from her; I felt ashamed that I had so long delayed to tell her about the sorrows that I had brought upon myself.