Gouache obeyed, and kept close behind her.  The church was very full and there was difficulty in getting seats.

“I will wait here,” said the young girl to her servant.  “Get us chairs and find out where there is to be a mass.  It is of no use for me to go through the crowd if I may have to come back again.”

The hard-featured woman nodded and went away.  Several minutes must elapse before she returned, and Faustina with Gouache behind her moved across the stream of persons who were going out through the door in the other aisle.  In a moment they found themselves in a comparatively quiet corner, separated from the main body of the church by the moving people.  Faustina fixed her eyes in the direction whence her woman would probably return, ready to enter the throng instantly, if necessary.  Even where they now were, so many others were standing and kneeling that the presence of the Zouave beside Faustina would create no surprise.

“It is very wrong to meet you in church,” said the girl, a little shy, at first, with that timidity a woman always feels on meeting a man whom she has last seen on unexpectedly intimate terms.

“I could not go away without seeing you,” replied Gouache, his eyes intent on her face.  “And I knew you would understand my signs, though no one else would.  You have made me very happy, Faustina.  It would have been agony to march away without seeing your face again—­you do not know what these days have been without you!  Do you realise that we used to meet almost every afternoon?  Did they tell you why I could not come?  I told every one I met, in hopes you might hear.  Did you?  Do you understand?”

Faustina nodded her graceful head, and glanced quickly at his face.  Then she looked down, tapping the pavement gently with her parasol.  The colour came and went in her cheeks.

“Do you really love me?” she asked in a low voice.

“I think, my darling, that no one ever loved as I love.  I would that I might be given time to tell you what my love is, and that you might have patience to hear.  What are words, unless one can say all one would?  What is it, if I tell you that I love you with all my heart, and soul and thoughts?  Do not other men say as much and forget that they have spoken?  I would find a way of saying it that should make you believe in spite of yourself—­”

“In spite of myself?” interrupted Faustina, with a bright smile while her brown eyes rested lovingly on his for an instant.  “You need not that,” she added simply, “for I love you, too.”

Nothing but the sanctity of the place prevented Anastase from taking her in his arms then and there.  There was something so exquisite in her simplicity and earnestness that he found himself speechless before her for a moment.  It was something that intoxicated his spirit more than his senses, for it was utterly new to him and appealed to his own loyal and innocent nature as it could not have appealed to a baser man.