of solitary passion in which it was borne upon him that he loved her enough to kill her rather than lose her.  From such passages, not unknown to men of forty, he would come out broken, exhausted, remorseful, a little dismayed.  He derived, however, considerable comfort from the quietist practice of sitting up now and then half the night by an open window, and meditating upon the wonder of her existence, like a believer lost in the mystic contemplation of his faith.

It must not be supposed that all these variations of his inward state were made manifest to the world.  General D’Hubert found no difficulty in appearing wreathed in smiles:  because, in fact, he was very happy.  He followed the established rules of his condition, sending over flowers (from his sister’s garden and hothouses) early every morning, and a little later following himself to have lunch with his intended, her mother, and her emigre uncle.  The middle of the day was spent in strolling or sitting in the shade.  A watchful deferential gallantry trembling on the verge of tenderness, was the note of their intercourse on his side—­with a playful turn of the phrase concealing the profound trouble of his whole being caused by her inaccessible nearness.  Late in the afternoon General D’Hubert walked home between the fields of vines, sometimes intensely miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes pensively sad, but always feeling a special intensity of existence:  that elation common to artists, poets, and lovers, to men haunted by a great passion, by a noble thought or a new vision of plastic beauty.

The outward world at that time did not exist with any special distinctness for General D’Hubert.  One evening, however, crossing a ridge from which he could see both houses, General D’Hubert became aware of two figures far down the road.  The day had been divine.  The festal decoration of the inflamed sky cast a gentle glow on the sober tints of the southern land.  The gray rocks, the brown fields, the purple undulating distances harmonised in luminous accord, exhaled already the scents of the evening.  The two figures down the road presented themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon of white dust.  General D’Hubert made out the long, straight-cut military capotes, buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked hats, the lean carven brown countenances—­old soldiers—­vieilles moustaches! The taller of the two had a black patch over one eye; the other’s hard, dry countenance presented some bizarre disquieting peculiarity which, on nearer approach, proved to be the absence of the tip of the nose.  Lifting their hands with one movement to salute the slightly lame civilian walking with a thick stick, they inquired for the house where the General Baron D’Hubert lived and what was the best way to get speech with him quietly.

“If you think this quiet enough,” said General D’Hubert, looking round at the ripening vine-fields framed in purple lines and dominated by the nest of gray and drab walls of a village clustering around the top of a steep, conical hill, so that the blunt church tower seemed but the shape of a crowning rock—­“if you think this quiet enough you can speak to him at once.  And I beg you, comrades, to speak openly with perfect confidence.”