It was during the period of hard distress subsequent to this rupture that she had met Hubert Liauran. From the corner of her solitary hearth, beside which she watched persistently, she could see so very clearly what the discovery of this tender child's heart had been to her. In an existence which had comprised nothing but wounding or disgrace--had not her keenest sorrows been dishonoured beforehand by their cause?--with what delighted emotion had she measured the purity of this young man's heart? What anxiety had she felt, and what a dread of not pleasing him! What a dread, too, knowing that she had pleased him, of being ruined in his thoughts! How she had trembled lest one of the cruel talkers of society should reveal her past to Hubert! How had she employed all her woman's art to make this love an adorable poem, wherein should be lacking nothing that might enchant a soul innocent and new to life! How had she enjoyed his reverence, and how had she allowed it to be prolonged! Ah! when she thought now of those two days at Folkestone she could scarcely believe that they had been real, and that she had had the courage to survive them. She remembered that she had gone with Hubert to the terminus in spite of every consideration of prudence; she had seen him disappear in the direction of London, leaning out of the carriage window to watch her the longer; she had re-entered the rooms which they had both occupied, before herself taking train for Dover, and there she had spent two hours in the grievous loneliness of a soul overwhelmed with simultaneous despair and felicity. Her soul bent beneath its weight of recollections like a flower overladen with dew. She had there known a complete union between her two natures--an almost passionate vibration of her entire being. She had half forgiven herself the past, excusing herself by saying mentally to Hubert the words which so many women have said aloud to men jealous of those bygone days which belonged to others: "I did not know you!" On their subsequent return to Paris, how carefully and piously had she set herself, during the spring and summer, to live in such a way as not to lose his affection for a single minute! She had resumed all the modesty admitted by love that is complete, but is ennobled by the soul. She trembled constantly lest her caresses should be a cause of corruption to this being, so young both in heart and in body, whom she wished to intoxicate without defiling.