It was under these circumstances that Etienne and Gabrielle unrolled their thread through the labyrinth of love, where both, not seeking to leave it, thought to dwell.  One day they had remained from morn to evening near the window where so many events had taken place.  The hours, filled at first with gentle talk, had ended in meditative silence.  They began to feel within them the wish for complete possession; and presently they reached the point of confiding to each other their confused ideas, the reflections of two beautiful, pure souls.  During these still, serene hours, Etienne’s eyes would sometimes fill with tears as he held the hand of Gabrielle to his lips.  Like his mother, but at this moment happier in his love than she had been in hers, the hated son looked down upon the sea, at that hour golden on the shore, black on the horizon, and slashed here and there with those silvery caps which betoken a coming storm.  Gabrielle, conforming to her friend’s action, looked at the sight and was silent.  A single look, one of those by which two souls support each other, sufficed to communicate their thoughts.  Each loved with that love so divinely like unto itself at every instant of its eternity that it is not conscious of devotion or sacrifice or exaction, it fears neither deceptions nor delay.  But Etienne and Gabrielle were in absolute ignorance of satisfactions, a desire for which was stirring in their souls.

When the first faint tints of twilight drew a veil athwart the sea, and the hush was interrupted only by the soughing of the flux and reflux on the shore, Etienne rose; Gabrielle followed his motion with a vague fear, for he had dropped her hand.  He took her in one of his arms, pressing her to him with a movement of tender cohesion, and she, comprehending his desire, made him feel the weight of her body enough to give him the certainty that she was all his, but not enough to be a burden on him.  The lover laid his head heavily on the shoulder of his friend, his lips touched the heaving bosom, his hair flowed over the white shoulders and caressed her throat.  The girl, ingenuously loving, bent her head aside to give more place for his head, passing her arm about his neck to gain support.  Thus they remained till nightfall without uttering a word.  The crickets sang in their holes, and the lovers listened to that music as if to employ their senses on one sense only.  Certainly they could only in that hour be compared to angels who, with their feet on earth, await the moment to take flight to heaven.  They had fulfilled the noble dream of Plato’s mystic genius, the dream of all who seek a meaning in humanity; they formed but one soul, they were, indeed, that mysterious Pearl destined to adorn the brow of a star as yet unknown, but the hope of all!

“Will you take me home?” said Gabrielle, the first to break the exquisite silence.

“Why should we part?” replied Etienne.

“We ought to be together always,” she said.