“Au revoir!” was the whisper breathed by the bride into the ear of the other. “Au revoir, my Ermentrude.  May you have a happy year in Switzerland!”

“Au revoir! little Madame. You will be happy I know in those United States to which you are going.”

And the tears stood in the eyes of both.

“You will write?”

“I will write.”

But the bride did not seem quite satisfied.  Glancing about and finding her young husband busy with his adieux, she drew her friend apart and softly murmured: 

“There is something I must say,—­something I must know, before the sea divides us.  You remember the day we all left school and you went home and I came to Britanny?  Ermentrude, Achille tells me that on that day he sought the whole house over for you till he came upon you in one of the classrooms; and that you whom I had sometimes seen so sad were very gay and told him between laughing and crying that you were bidding a solemn farewell to all the nooks and corners of the old seminary, because your fiance awaited you at home, and there would be no coming back.”

“I meant my music.”

“He did not know that, Ermentrude,” and here she laid her hands upon the other’s shoulders, drawing back as she did so to look earnestly up into her face.  “Was that done for me?”

They were too near for anything but the truth to pass from eye to eye.  Ermentrude tried to laugh and utter a quick No, no! but the little bride was not deceived.  Again upon her face there appeared that wonderful look of hers, which made her face for the moment verily beautiful, and unclasping her hands, she threw them about the other’s neck, whispering in awed tones: 

“Yet you loved him! loved him too!”

Then after a moment of silence dear to both their hearts, she drew back to give her friend one other look, and quietly said: 

“His heart is mine now, Ermentrude, wholly and truly mine.  And so you would have it be, I am sure.  Life looks fair to me and very sweet; but however fair, however sweet, that life is yours if ever you want it and when you want it.  The time may come—­one never knows—­when I can pay you back this debt.  Till then, let there be perfect trust and perfect love between us.  Give me your hand upon it—­not just your lips—­for I speak as men speak when they mean to keep their word.”

Their eyes met, their hands clasped; then the bridegroom drew away his bride, and Ermentrude turned with bowed head and glistening eyes, to enter upon the new life awaiting her in ways she had yet to tread.

* * * * *

The second series of episodes opens with the meeting of a man and woman on a rustic bridge spanning a Swiss chasm.  They are strangers to each other, yet both instinctively pause and a flush of intuitive feeling dyes the cheek of each.