A year had passed since the count’s return from Guise, and still he and Clara had not spoken of that which filled them, and made the music and the poetry of their lives. To Clara’s heart there never came a doubt that she was loved. To doubt Paul would be to lose faith in the operation of natural laws. True, they had not confessed their love in words, and though it was sure to come, Clara almost dreaded it, as though it might break the spell that surrounded her like an atmosphere. He was in all things her ideal: high in sentiment, devoted to humanity, and, like her father, appreciative of all things, impatient of nothing, because he exemplified a grand faith in the “mills of God”—in the ultimate triumph of the best. When you gained his friendship you forgot his rank and wealth, and thought only of the man. No one ever felt the grasp of his hand without a sense of pride—that honest pride experienced in awakening an interest in one superior to his kind. When he spoke to you, it was impossible to avoid feeling flattered. He gave you his whole attention for the time, and his fine eyes rested on your features as if they would let no slightest movement or expression escape, and at the moment, you were compelled by a power over which you had no control, to express the highest and best that was in you; and then his beauty was something exceptional, for it delighted men almost more than women. After his return, he had been more with Clara, though not much alone. The something that he had remarked as troubling or oppressing her, he still noticed with great pain; but he could not ask her for her confidence. Some time, he knew, she would give it unsolicited, and meanwhile he refrained instinctively from pressing himself too much upon her notice, leaving her time after time with a mere pressure of the hand, more delightful in its magnetic effect than all the caresses of the many women he had known. In his creed, it was woman’s prerogative to call; the lover’s to answer. By no sign yet had Clara shown him that she desired or needed more than she received; and nothing could have been more impossible to a nature like his, than to sue for any grace for his own sake; so he waited, and he prevented himself from too great anxiety by forcing all his energy into his great work. He had brought with him from Guise several of the most accomplished workmen, who had aided in the building of the _Familistère_, and the enterprise went on rapidly and surely. The walls of the palace and buildings were all completed, and the palace was to be ready for its occupants in the early fall, and the great inaugural festival was set down for the following June; both the count and the doctor agreeing that the time for a public jubilee was not when the palace was done, but when the schools, the theatre, the library, and all the details of the new social life were in full working order.