This therefore may be constituted as a plea for refraining to dwell upon the time so laden with exquisite joy to Josephine de Maistre, the time that made up the days and nights of this period of her life at Sleepy Cottage. She had worked out such fallacious reasonings as justified her in the end, in holding clandestine meetings with her romantic lover, and so, each night when she had finished reading to her father, she stole quietly away to the rustic gate, at the end of the shrubbery, there to lend a willing ear to protestations of love and devotion, from the lips upon whose threshhold she knew, hung the words of her future destiny. Things had gone thus far, when one night, Fifine in her old humor, was grumbling against the loneliness of her existence, and giving expression to her discontent in most touching terms. Her chivalrous adorer looked the picture of intense sympathy, as he lay stretched in the long grass at her feet. "Fifine," said he, and something in his voice and eyes thrilled her to the very heart, "my darling, your words are loaded with pain for me; why do you grumble who should be happy amidst these surroundings. If your life were as blank and prospectless as mine, you might have good reason indeed to sigh and complain. You see, a man has to rough it with body and soul. It's not so hard to keep our bodies up, but the task is for the heart. Men should have no hearts, or else some one to love them always and well. I could gather so much courage in a worthy love." The girl, poor simple child, was touched. She drew nearer to Bijou whose handsome head lay nestling against the rustic bench where she was sitting. He was watching the quick, nervous heaving of her breast, and he could see a slight tremor in the well-curved lip. She fell upon her knees before him, and as she spoke, two large round tears flowed over her pretty checks. "But Bijou, do you not know that I love you as worthily as I know how, that life with you is all the world to me, and without you it is a miserable blank." Then she laid her bowed head on his shoulder, and sobbed convulsively. There was a curious expression in the man's face, as he raised the girl and made her sit beside him. Then taking both her hands in his, he said, in a low tone-- "Fifine, I was only waiting those words from your lips. They fill my vacant life with sweet and pleasant dreams, but in our case, as in all others, 'the course of love can not run smoothly.' You see I gave up my college course after I had met you, and since that time I have been thrown on the world's mercy, almost a penniless waif. I have no wealth to offer you, no luxury of any kind, no abundance, but love and devotion, and that cannot satisfy you." "O Bijou!" the girl cried out in a passionate tone, "you wrong me, you do indeed. Give me your full heart and your empty hands. I am rich in the world's wealth, let me share it with you; give me that abundance of love you speak of, and I will be--Oh! so satisfied!"