"We were wholly wrong, my friend, in doubting the gallantry of the officer. 'Is it not true, monsieur,' I asked him, 'that it is not your intention to invade to-night the dwelling of a young lady, who is alone in her house with her nurse and an old grey-headed equerry? To-morrow it will be daylight. The gate of the manor shall be thrown open to you. You shall then search for your criminal. Place your sentries at the gate. Surround the walls, if you fear escape in that quarter. To-morrow I should be happy to express to you my appreciation of your courtesy, and to the best of my powers I shall do you the honors of my house.' Our man," Bertha added, "lost himself in apologies; he postponed for to-morrow his visit to the manor, and asked my pardon for the liberty he would take of placing sentrymen at the gate and at the wall of the close in order to render all escape impossible. Thereupon I bade the officer good evening--and here I am back again." "But now, my friend," Bertha proceeded in a more serious tone, after a pause, "in an hour it will be daylight. Before that hour shall have elapsed we must take and carry out a resolution that has been long decreed. You must have been convinced thereof by the letter which I wrote to you. And, once upon this subject, I must say that, even if the death of your bride had not rendered our marriage impossible, it became so by reason of your encounter with my brother. You struck him with a sword; I could not accept your hand, now that it is reddened with my brother's blood. Above all, however legitimate the revolt was, it caused his death, and you were one of the chiefs of the uprising. An abyss separates us in this world, Nominoë. Back in this manor after the burning of the Castle of Plouernel, I faced the reality without weakness. Our separation, the barriers that rendered our union impossible, weakened in nothing my love. That can not be affected by earthly causes. But my existence--sorely tried by so many misfortunes, by so many and cruel disappointments, even in the bosom of my own family--was becoming intolerable to me. Our marriage being broken off, my life lacked purpose. Then came the passionate desire to see my mother again, and shall I confess it to you?--an invincible, a devouring curiosity regarding the worlds where our lives are continued, body and soul: a curiosity that bordered on vertigo, when, back at Mezlean, and seated here in the evening with my eyes fixed upon the sky, I contemplated the myriads of stars, where our re-births are effected, as infinite in number as all eternity. All these reasons determined me to leave this world, to the end of rejoining my mother and waiting for you, Nominoë, there where we shall meet again those whom we have loved. My determination being taken, I wrote to you, I wished to bid you good-bye and receive a word of farewell from you. My emissary departed in quest of you. Soon a metamorphosis operated itself in me. The burning