WE sat for some time in silence, she looking with childish delight at the brilliant and ever-changing scene before her, I pondering over the perplexities of the situation. I saw that I should need all my wit to straighten out the snarl, and though I was proud of my wit, as every Gascon must be, I doubted somewhat if it would prove equal to this task. But this misgiving did not vex me long,--we of the south take trouble as it comes. Besides, was I not here, in one of the loveliest spots of the most beautiful city in the world, with an enchanting girl at my side, who permitted me to hold her hand and gaze into her eyes? Mordieu! in such a situation, how could a man, with warm, red blood in him, doubt his power for bringing things to pass? Indeed, the scene itself was one to make a man forget his troubles, as I saw it had made my companion forget hers, and I had not looked upon it so often that I could contemplate it with indifferent eyes. The moon was just rising behind the long line of the Tuileries and showed us in the walks and about the fountains the crowds which had gathered to get a breath of air and exchange a word of gossip. A row of lanterns had been swung from end to end of the Allée des Orangers--by order, perhaps, of some wealthy bourgeois, who wished to hold a fête there--and two or three men, in a uniform I did not know, were busy keeping loiterers away. It was public ground, of course, but then money will work miracles, especially in Paris. Away to our right gleamed the quays and the river; the former even more crowded than the gardens, the latter sparkling with the lanterns of grain-barges and fishing-boats, drifting with the current, or slowly making head against it. And everywhere was the murmur of voices, like the wind stirring the leaves of a great forest. I saw how the girl’s eyes sparkled and her lips opened with delight as she gazed at all this. “Beautiful, is it not, Mademoiselle?” I asked, at last, merely to make her look at me, that I might see again into her eyes. “Oh, beautiful! I had never imagined the like!” “Not even when you were building your castles of the future in the convent?” She made a little grimace of disgust. “This is life,” she said. “That was not life--it was only the gray shadow of it.” Then suddenly I saw that she shivered. “You are cold!” I cried. “And you have no cloak--only this thin dress. Come, we must go!” “Go?” she questioned, looking at me, all her worry back upon her in an instant. “Yes--but whither, Monsieur? Not to my uncle’s!” She was quite white with the horror of the thought, and I felt that her hand was trembling. I pressed it in both of mine--a child’s hand, I repeated to myself. “No, not back to your uncle’s,” I assured her. “But you must go somewhere for the night. Could you not return to the convent?” She breathed a deep sigh of relief and the color swept back into her cheeks again. But she shook her head in answer to my question.