Again it was Pierre who brought to his suffering mistress the proof for which she longed and which she feared.--It was the seventh night after Olivier's arrival, and she was awaiting Pierre at half-past eleven, behind the open door of the hothouse. She had only seen him in the afternoon long enough to fix this nocturnal meeting which made her pulse throb as with a happy fever. The afternoon had been cloudy, heavy, stormy. And the opaque dome of clouds stretched over the sky hid every ray of moonlight, every twinkling star. Heavy lightning glowed upon the horizon at moments, lighting up the garden, disclosing everything to the eyes of the young woman who stooped forward to see the white alleys bordered with the bluish agaves, the lawns with their flowering shrubs, the green stems of the bamboos, a bunch of parasol pines with their red trunks whose dark foliage stood out for a moment in the sudden flash of light followed immediately by a darker, more impenetrable shadow. Was it nervousness caused by the approaching tempest, for a heavy gust of hot wind swept across the garden, announcing the advent of a hurricane, or was it remorse at the idea of exposing her friend to the violence of the storm when he parted from her, that made Ely already anxious, troubled, and unhappy? When she at last saw Hautefeuille, by the light of the cold and livid lightning, passing along the fringe of bamboos, her heart beat with anxiety. "Heavens!" she said to him, "you ought not to have come upon such a night.--Listen." Big drops of rain began to fall upon the glass of the hothouse. Two formidable thunderclaps were heard in the distance. And now the drops of rain became more and more general, so that around the two lovers under the protecting dome of glass there was a continuous, sonorous rattle that almost drowned the sound of their voices. "You see our good genius protects us," answered the young man, pressing her passionately to his heart, "since I got here just in time.--And, besides, I should have come through the tempest without noticing it.--I have been too unhappy this evening. I felt I must see you to comfort me, to help me." "You look disturbed," she replied. And touching his face in the darkness with her soft, caressing hands, she added, her voice changing: "Your cheeks are burning and there are tears in your eyes.--What is the matter?" "I will tell you presently," Pierre answered, "when I have been comforted by feeling that you are near me.--God! How I love you! How I love you!" he repeated with an intensity in which she discerned suffering. Then, later, when they were both in the solitude of her room, he said:--