Dawn and departure. She had trembled like a leaf, half comprehending only; her mother kissed her twice, in feverish haste, with lips like dry leaves: that was their parting. Some one called “Gabrielle!” at the door. The coach was at the gate. She stopped at the wicket, looked down the lane, said a few words to the coachboy who guarded her gown from the wheels: “Tell him,” she said, “that I love him. Tell him remember me.” She paused again at the door of the coach, her foot on the step, a dazed look in her eyes, saying, “Tell him not to forget me. I love him!” The wheels rumbled over the cobbles. She never came back. When she entered the coach young love was done for forever: she never saw her golden lad again. Love beat his rose-red wings in vain; he could not overtake the coach; for the coach was fate; all was over; his dusty feet halted in the heat of the dusty road; “Good-by!... Good-by, forever!” Days became weeks, weeks months, months grew into years; she never came again. She passed through the convent’s sheltering door, was safe from mischance and folly; passed into a world remote of unfamiliar faces, and forgot. God made memory cruel, that men might know remorse; but the Devil devised forgetfulness, anodyne of regret. Reputed heiress to vast estates, provided with boundless means and gifted with great beauty, coming to marriageable age in all the freshness of her youthful loveliness, she was wedded to a wealthy planter’s only son whose love for her was very great. Pure happiness was theirs prolonged far beyond the honeymoon. Surrounded by every creature comfort wealth could procure or affection devise, secure in a faithful man’s unaltering love, she dwelt serene, in a country where the fruits of the earth and the flowers of the forest spread natural loveliness about fields of unsurpassed fertility. She never knew winter, want, nor war; her years were filled with peace; her estates increased to vast proportions; a thousand slaves were happy, being hers. Admired for her beauty, greatly loved, she returned an adoring husband’s devotion, and bore him children with eyes like the morning and hair like wreathed flames. Her daughters married and were fruitful, bearing children fair as an April day, with eyes like the sky of the morning. For them, for her, the world rolled on in unperturbed peace. But she never saw her golden lad again. * * * * *