To think that she had ever been so foolish as at first to try to avoid all meetings with him, and then, later on, had determined that although she could not help loving him, he should never know it! Such folly on her part was quite inexplicable. Since love is right, and is the fate of all, what good could be gained by making martyrs of them both? A complete silence ensued, and in her enthusiastic, imaginative, nervous state, she heard, louder than ever, in the quiet of the warm night, the voices of the saints about her, who said love was never forbidden when it was so ardent and true as this. Behind her back a bright flash of light had suddenly appeared; scarcely a breath, but a delicate wave from the moon upon the chamber floor. An invisible finger, no doubt that of her guardian angel, was placed upon her mouth, as if to unseal her lips and relieve her from her vow. Henceforth she could freely unburden herself and tell the truth. All that which was powerful and tender in her surroundings now whispered to her words which seemed to come from the infinite unknown. Then, at last, Angelique spoke. “Ah! yes, I recollect--I recollect it all.” And Felicien was at once carried away with delight by the music of this voice, whose extreme charm was so great over him that his love seemed to increase simply from listening to it. “Yes, I remember well when you came in the night. You were so far away those first evenings that the little sound you made in walking left me in quite an uncertain state. At last I realised perfectly that it was you who approached me, and a little later I recognised your shadow. At length, one evening you showed yourself boldly, on a beautiful, bright night like this, in the full white light of the moon. You came out so slowly from the inanimate objects near you, like a creation from all the mysteries that surrounded me, exactly as I had expected to see you for a long time, and punctual to the meeting. “I have never forgotten the great desire to laugh, which I kept back, but which broke forth in spite of me, when you saved the linen that was being carried away by the Chevrotte. I recollect my anger when you robbed me of my poor people, by giving them so much money, and thus making me appear as a miser. I can still recall my fear on the evening when you forced me to run so fast through the grass with my bare feet. Oh, yes, I have not forgotten anything--not the slightest thing.” At this last sentence her voice, pure and crystalline, was a little broken by the thought of those magic words of the young man, the power of which she felt so deeply when he said, “I love you,” and a deep blush passed over her face. And he--he listened to her with delight.