felt, as he suddenly saw her smiling face in the water, as keen a joy as he would have experienced had she suddenly thrown herself into his arms at the bend of a pathway.  Around them the radiant morning hummed with mirth; a wave of warm light, sonorous with the buzzing of insects, beat against the old wall, the posts, and the curbstone.  They, however, no longer saw the shower of morning sunshine, nor heard the thousand sounds rising from the ground; they were in the depths of their green hiding-place, under the earth, in that mysterious and awesome cavity, and quivered with pleasure as they lingered there enjoying its fresh coolness and dim light.

On some mornings, Miette, who by nature could not long maintain a contemplative attitude, began to tease; she would shake the rope, and make drops of water fall in order to ripple the mirrors and deface the reflections.  Silvere would then entreat her to remain still; he, whose fervour was deeper than hers, knew no keener pleasure than that of gazing at his love’s image reflected so distinctly in every feature.  But she would not listen to him; she would joke and feign a rough old bogey’s voice, to which the echo imparted a raucous melodiousness.

“No, no,” she would say in chiding fashion; “I don’t love you to-day!  I’m making faces at you; see how ugly I am.”

And she laughed at seeing the fantastic forms which their spreading faces assumed as they danced upon the disturbed water.

One morning she got angry in real earnest.  She did not find Silvere at the trysting-place, and waited for him for nearly a quarter of an hour, vainly making the pulley grate.  She was just about to depart in a rage when he arrived.  As soon as she perceived him she let a perfect tempest loose in the well, shook her pail in an irritated manner, and made the blackish water whirl and splash against the stones.  In vain did Silvere try to explain that aunt Dide had detained him.  To all his excuses she replied:  “You’ve vexed me; I don’t want to see you.”

The poor lad, in despair, vainly questioned that sombre cavity, now so full of lamentable sounds, where, on other days, such a bright vision usually awaited him amid the silence of the stagnant water.  He had to go away without seeing Miette.  On the morrow, arriving before the time, he gazed sadly into the well, hearing nothing, and thinking that the obstinate girl would not come, when she, who was already on the other side slyly watching his arrival, bent over suddenly with a burst of laughter.  All was at once forgotten.

In this wise the well was the scene of many a little drama and comedy.  That happy cavity, with its gleaming mirrors and musical echoes, quickly ripened their love.  They endowed it with such strange life, so filled it with their youthful love, that, long after they had ceased to come and lean over the brink, Silvere, as he drew water every morning, would fancy he could see Miette’s smiling face in the dim light that still quivered with the joy they had set there.