All these ideas crowded into her mind immediately Hautefeuille left her. Again, as after his first visit, she accompanied him as far as the threshold of the hothouse, clasping his hand and leading him through the salon plunged in darkness, with a feeling of terror and yet of pride when she felt that the hand of the young man, indifferent to danger, never trembled. She shuddered at the first contact of the cold night air. A last embrace, their lips united in a yearning final kiss, the kiss of farewell,--always heartrending between lovers, for fate is treacherous and misfortune flies swiftly,--a few minutes during which she stood listening to his steps resounding as he walked down the deserted pathways of the garden, and then she returned to her room, returned to find the place, now cold, where her beloved had reposed in her solitary bed. In the sudden melancholy mood caused by separation her intelligence awoke from its vision of happiness and forgetfulness, awoke to a sense of reality. And she was afraid. Here fear was intense, but short-lived. Ely descended from a line of warriors. She was capable of carrying out actively an energetic policy. She could think out clearly a situation. Resourceful and proud natures like hers have no time for the feverish creations of an unsound imagination enfeebled by terror. She was one of those who dare to look upon approaching danger. Thus in the first flush of her dawning passion for Hautefeuille, as her confession to Madame Brion proved, she had foreseen with a clearness that was almost a certainty the struggle that would take place between her love and Olivier's friendship for Pierre. But this power of courageous realization allows such natures to measure the danger once they are face to face with it. They lay bare, with the greatest clearness, the facts of the crisis through which they pass. They have the strength that comes from daring to hope, from having an exact idea of the danger in moments that appear desperate. Thus though Ely de Carlsberg was a victim to a return of her awful anxiety, after Hautefeuille's departure, when she again laid down her head upon the pillow, though she suffered from a disquietude that kept her awake, when she arose the following morning she again felt confidence in the future. She had hope!