“Can it be,” said Victor, breaking the spell, “can it be that we once knew Paris?”

“Paris!” repeated madame.  Her eyes took in her beaded skirt and moccasins and replaced them with glowing silks and shimmering laces.

Paris!  Many a phantom was stirred from its tomb at the sound of this magic name.

Anne perched herself upon a boulder and the Chevalier rested beside her, while madame and the poet strolled a short distance away.

“Shall we ever see our dear Paris again, Gabrielle?” asked the poet.

“I hope so; and soon, soon!”

“How came you to sign that paper?”

“He would have broken my arm, else.  How I hated him!  Tricks, subterfuges, lies, menaces; I was surrounded by them.  And I believed in so many things those early days!”

“How softly breathes this last, lingering ghost of summer,” he said.  “How lovingly the pearls and opals and amethysts of heaven linger on the crimsoning hills!  See how the stream runs like a silver thread, laughing and singing, to join the grave river.  We can not see the river from here, but we know how gravely it journeys to the sea.  Can you not smell the odor of mint, of earth, of the forest, and the water?  Hark!  I hear a bird singing.  There he goes, a yellow bird, a golden rouleau of song.  How the yellow flower stands out against the dark of the grasses!  It is all beautiful.  It is the immortality in us which nature enchants.  See how the wooded lands fade and fade till they and the heavens meet and dissolve!  And all this is yours, Gabrielle, for the seeing and the hearing.  Some day I shall know all things, but never again shall I know the perfect beauty of this day.  Some day I shall know the reason for this and for that, why I made a bad step here and a short one there; but never again, this hour.”  He picked up a chestnut-bur and opened it, extending the plump chestnuts to her.

How delicately this man was telling her that he still loved her!  Absently her hand closed over the chestnuts, and the thought in her eyes was far away.  If only it had been written that she might love him!

“Monsieur de Saumaise,” said Anne, “will you take me to the pool?  You told me that it would make a fine mirror, and I have not seen my face in so long a time that I declare I have quite forgotten how it looks.”

“Come along, Mademoiselle; into the heart of the wood.  I had a poem to recite to you, but I have forgotten part of it.  It is heroic, and begins like this: 

  “Laughing at fate and her chilling frown,
    Plunging through wilderness, cavern, and cave,
  Building the citadel, fortress, and town,
    Fearing nor desert, the sea, nor the grave: 
    Courage finds her a niche in the knave,
  Fame is not niggard with laurel or pain;
    Pathways with blood and bones do they pave: 
  These are the hazards that kings disdain!