And after disposing of his doubts, which certainly would in a short time come up again, he thought of the joy of the moment, consulting his watch.  Five o’clock!  She might come now at any minute!  He thought that he recognized her afar off in a lady who was passing through the grating by the rue Pasquier.  She seemed to him a little different, but it occurred to him that possibly the Summer fashions might have altered her appearance.  But soon he saw that he had made a mistake.  She was not alone, another lady was with her.  They were perhaps English or North American women who worshipped the memory of Marie Antoinette and wished to visit the Chapelle Expiatoire, the old tomb of the executed queen.  Julio watched them as they climbed the flights of steps and crossed the interior patio in which were interred the eight hundred Swiss soldiers killed in the attack of the Tenth of August, with other victims of revolutionary fury.

Disgusted at his error, he continued his tramp.  His ill humor made the monument with which the Bourbon restoration had adorned the old cemetery of the Madeleine, appear uglier than ever to him.  Time was passing, but she did not come.  Every time that he turned, he looked hungrily at the entrances of the garden.  And then it happened as in all their meetings.  She suddenly appeared as if she had fallen from the sky or risen up from the ground, like an apparition.  A cough, a slight rustling of footsteps, and as he turned, Julio almost collided with her.

“Marguerite!  Oh, Marguerite!” . . .

It was she, and yet he was slow to recognize her.  He felt a certain strangeness in seeing in full reality the countenance which had occupied his imagination for three months, each time more spirituelle and shadowy with the idealism of absence.  But his doubts were of short duration.  Then it seemed as though time and space were eliminated, that he had not made any voyage, and but a few hours had intervened since their last interview.

Marguerite divined the expansion which might follow Julio’s exclamations, the vehement hand-clasp, perhaps something more, so she kept herself calm and serene.

“No; not here,” she said with a grimace of repugnance.  “What a ridiculous idea for us to have met here!”

They were about to seat themselves on the iron chairs, in the shadow of some shrubbery, when she rose suddenly.  Those who were passing along the boulevard might see them by merely casting their eyes toward the garden.  At this time, many of her friends might be passing through the neighborhood because of its proximity to the big shops. . . .  They, therefore, sought refuge at a corner of the monument, placing themselves between it and the rue des Mathurins.  Desnoyers brought two chairs near the hedge, so that when seated they were invisible to those passing on the other side of the railing.  But this was not solitude.  A few steps away, a fat, nearsighted man was reading his paper, and a group of women were chatting and embroidering.  A woman with a red wig and two dogs—­some housekeeper who had come down into the garden in order to give her pets an airing—­passed several times near the amorous pair, smiling discreetly.