of reply, but a glance at her face assured him that his prayer had been heard and granted. With a tranquil smile, he bade farewell to the President, who again betrayed a sad lack of penetration in accompanying him to the gate, without the remotest suspicion that a clandestine midnight meeting of the lovers had been planned under his own eyes, and that the young officer's sudden composure arose from a joy he found it difficult to conceal. [Illustration: "FAREWELL."] II. To both the lovers the hours seemed leaden indeed, until night came. At last, the church clock of Toulouse chimed three-quarters past eleven, and Gabrielle stole tremblingly down to the garden. The night was dark, and not a sound could the young girl hear but the tumultuous beating of her own heart, as she gently withdrew the bolts from the outer door and stepped lightly upon the soft green sward. Filled with dread of the consequences which might ensue if her secret meeting with Maurice should be discovered by her father, the poor child's remorse for her act of disobedience, as she regarded it, caused her to pause more than once, undecided whether to keep her tacit promise, or to creep back swiftly to her chamber. Before she could adopt the course dictated by prudence and submission to her father's will, she heard a light step behind her, and in another instant she was clasped in her lover's arms. Gently releasing herself, she placed her hand in his, and led him to a low bench close by, under the shadow of a tree. Seated side by side, they spoke in low whispers of their approaching separation and of their mutual sorrow during Maurice's long absence from France. They talked of their occupations, and of the expedients each would adopt to make the time seem less wearisome. They arranged the employment of every day, and fixed the hours when each should breathe the other's name, and thus know that they were in communion of thought, though thousands of miles of ocean rolled between them, forgetting that in widely different climes the day to one would be night to the other. Then, perhaps, this geographical obstacle occurred to them, and they triumphantly vanquished it by promising to think of each other always, awake by day and in dreams by night, which would be the surest method of never being absent for an instant from each other's meditations.