The fair summer evening was tending towards twilight; the sun stood fiery and low in a cloudless horizon; the last loveliness of the last quietest daylight hour was fading on the violet sky, as I entered the square.

I approached the house.  She was at the window—­it was thrown wide open.  A bird-cage hung rather high up, against the shutter-panel.  She was standing opposite to it, making a plaything for the poor captive canary of a piece of sugar, which she rapidly offered and drew back again, now at one bar of the cage, and now at another.  The bird hopped and fluttered up and down in his prison after the sugar, chirping as if he enjoyed playing his part of the game with his mistress.  How lovely she looked!  Her dark hair, drawn back over each cheek so as just to leave the lower part of the ear visible, was gathered up into a thick simple knot behind, without ornament of any sort.  She wore a plain white dress fastening round the neck, and descending over the bosom in numberless little wavy plaits.  The cage hung just high enough to oblige her to look up to it.  She was laughing with all the glee of a child; darting the piece of sugar about incessantly from place to place.  Every moment, her head and neck assumed some new and lovely turn—­every moment her figure naturally fell into the position which showed its pliant symmetry best.  The last-left glow of the evening atmosphere was shining on her—­the farewell pause of daylight over the kindred daylight of beauty and youth.

I kept myself concealed behind a pillar of the garden-gate; I looked, hardly daring either to move or breathe; for I feared that if she saw or heard me, she would leave the window.  After a lapse of some minutes, the canary touched the sugar with his beak.

“There, Minnie!” she cried laughingly, “you have caught the runaway sugar, and now you shall keep it!”

For a moment more, she stood quietly looking at the cage; then raising herself on tip-toe, pouted her lips caressingly to the bird, and disappeared in the interior of the room.

The sun went down; the twilight shadows fell over the dreary square; the gas lamps were lighted far and near; people who had been out for a breath of fresh air in the fields, came straggling past me by ones and twos, on their way home—­and still I lingered near the house, hoping she might come to the window again; but she did not re-appear.  At last, a servant brought candles into the room, and drew down the Venetian blinds.  Knowing it would be useless to stay longer, I left the square.

I walked homeward joyfully.  That second sight of her completed what the first meeting had begun.  The impressions left by it made me insensible for the time to all boding reflections, careless of exercising the smallest self-restraint.  I gave myself up to the charm that was at work on me.  Prudence, duty, memories and prejudices of home, were all absorbed and forgotten in love—­love that I encouraged, that I dwelt over in the first reckless luxury of a new sensation.