The young man’s lips touched a cheek that was still wet. Thus their first kiss was mingled with sadness, as if to symbolize their union for life, in sorrow and in joy. Madame Guibert had gone to the end of the drawing-room, and was looking at Marcel’s photograph; but at this late hour it was more in memory than in the portrait that she could see her son’s features. Jean and Paule came up to her. “How happy Marcel would be,” said the young man. “I think now he knew my heart before I did myself.” And the girl was thinking of her brother’s words: “Don’t be anxious, you will be happy some day.” Could he, who bore the fatal sign upon his brow and walked towards death with a sure step, have read the future then, with eyes that saw into another world? Was it his detachment from this life that enabled him to understand the affinity of souls and the secret of destinies? Paule’s sisterly devotion was glad to have Marcel associated with her own love. The glowing struggle of the daylight with the dusk was over. Day was dead. “I must go,” murmured Jean to his fiancée. And immediately she felt sad. Already all her thoughts were with her future husband and this first separation was a cause of grief. “It is very late,” Madame Guibert broke in. “Stay with us, Jean. You must dine with us--you are not hard to please. Afterwards you can go back to Rose Villa.” He hesitated a minute. “I cannot,” he said. “My uncle would be anxious. I was rude to him just now on the road and I don’t wish to cause him fresh annoyance.” He told Paule of M. Loigny’s unaccomplished official mission. “Come back with him to-morrow for luncheon, then,” continued Madame Guibert. “Tell him that the garden will play its part in the fête. We shall have our loveliest flowers on the table. They will entertain him. Then we will all go and celebrate your engagement at the village church.” As Jean left Le Maupas he found darkness in the oakwood. Joyfully and in no haste he descended the wooded hillside, as though it were the plain straight path of his well-ordered life in the days to come; the same hillside that Marcel had once mounted running, with the fire of love in his heart and the savor of danger upon his dry lips. That night Paule was late in getting to sleep. She welcomed love with a steadfast heart, and with a serious feeling that made her resolution the firmer, not the weaker. She had climbed the hill of her youth, fighting difficulties, both physical and moral, as the hardy mountain-sheep struggle upward through the bushes which tear their fleeces on the way. Now it seemed to her that she was walking over a plain and that her bare feet were treading the soft grass. The sky before her was full of light. And what did it matter to her if she still had to climb? Would she not hereafter have a stronger arm to lean upon? And did she not feel in herself a new courage? But Paule had been asleep a long time when her mother was still watching and praying.