"Yes, yes, it was a dream, or else it was my little sister Mila who gave me that kiss. She is a mocking madcap! she would have explained the great mystery of the locket to me if I had questioned her frankly and earnestly. Doubtless there is some perfectly natural cause for all this which does not occur to me. Isn't it always so with natural causes? The only one that one does not divine is always the simplest. Ah! if Mila knew what danger she is playing with, and what pain she might spare me by telling me the truth! I will press her so to-morrow that she will tell me everything!" While Michel reflected thus, the crystal water murmured in its narrow basin, wherein quivered the spectre of the moon. The fountain was a small terra-cotta affair, of classic simplicity; an aquatic cupid grasping a huge carp from whose mouth the stream of water fell about a foot into the reservoir. The artist who had executed the figure had attempted to give it a mischievous expression, but he had succeeded only in imparting to the carp's great eyes a glare of grotesque ferocity. Michel looked at the group without seeing it, and to no purpose was the night soft and fragrant; he, passionate lover of nature that he was, absorbed by his own thoughts, denied to nature his accustomed homage on that evening. And yet the murmur of the water acted upon his imagination without his realizing it. He remembered a similar melodious sound, the timid and melancholy murmur with which the marble Naiad filled the grotto of the Palmarosa palace as she emptied her urn into the basin; the blissful sensations of his dream passed before his mind once more, and he would fain have fallen asleep where he stood, hoping for a repetition of his hallucination. "But what am I thinking of!" he suddenly said to himself; "am I not a most absurd novice? Did she not stop here in order to invite me to prolong an ardent tête-à-tête? I took that sudden fatigue, that fancy to sit in the first garden that we came to, for an honest explanation of the confusion she felt--was it not intended as an encouragement to my uncouth timidity?" He eagerly approached the princess, feeling emboldened by the shadow of the arbor. The bench was so small that, unless he asked her to make room for him, he could not sit beside her. He sat down on the grass, not precisely at her feet, but near enough to be nearer still ere long. "Well, Michel," she said to him, with an indescribable sweetness in her voice, "are you also tired, pray?" "I am worn out," he replied, in a tone of deep emotion which made the princess start. "What do you mean? you are not ill, my child?" she said, putting out her hand, which came in contact with the young man's silky hair in the darkness.