On the bench before the inn sat mademoiselle herself, alone. She gave a start of surprise when I came up to her. "Mademoiselle," I said, "I have just seen your boy, Pierre, riding towards Clochonne." "Yes," she replied, looking off towards the darkest part of the forest. "I--I was alarmed at your absence. I did not know where you had gone; I sent him to look for you." "Then I would better run after and call him back," I said, taking a step towards the road. "No, no!" she answered, quickly. "Do not leave me now. He will come back soon of his own accord. I told him to do so if he did not find you. I must ask you to bear with me, monsieur. The solitude, the strangeness of the place, almost appal me. I feel a kind of terror when I do not know that you are near." "Mademoiselle," I said, sitting beside her on the bench, "I cannot describe that which I shall feel, if I am doomed ever to know that you are not near me. It will be as if the sun had ceased to shine, and the earth had turned barren." A blush mounted to her cheeks; she dropped her humid eyes; her breast heaved. For an instant she seemed to have forgotten her distresses. Then sorrow resumed its place on her countenance, and she answered, sadly: "Ah, monsieur, when you shall have truly known me!" "Have I not known you a whole day?" I asked. "I wonder that life had any relish for me before yesterday. It seems as if I had known you always, though the joy that your presence gives me will always be fresh and novel. Ah, mademoiselle, if you knew what sweetness suddenly filled the world at my first sight of you!" I took her hand in mine. She made a weak effort to withdraw it; I tightened my hold; she let it remain. Then she turned her blue eyes up to mine with a look of infinite trust and yielding, so that I felt that, rapid as had been my own yielding to the charm of her beauty and her gentleness, she had as speedily acknowledged in me the man by whom her heart might be commanded. As we sat thus, the gypsy within, who had been for some time aimlessly strumming his instrument, began to sing. The words of his song came to us subdued, but distinct: "The sparkle of my lady's eyes-- Ah, sight that is the fairest! The look of love that in them lies-- Ah, thrill that is the rarest! Oh, comrades mine, go roam the earth, You'll find in all your roving That all its other joys are worth Not half the joys of loving!" "Ah, mademoiselle," I whispered, "before yesterday those words would have meant nothing to me!" She made no answer, but closed her eyes, as if to shut out every thought but consciousness of that moment. And now the gypsy, in an air and voice expressive of sadness, as he had before been expressive of rapture, sang a second stanza: