"And I," rejoined Gabriel, "since our childhood, when we were happy without knowing it, do not remember, Diane, that I have ever known in my poor lonely, troubled life a single moment to be compared to this." For a while they were silent, gazing in rapt enjoyment at each other. Diane resumed:-- "Come and sit by me, Gabriel. Can you believe it, dear, this moment, which has united us once more in so unhoped-for a manner, I have nevertheless dreamed of and foreseen, even in my apparently hopeless captivity? I have always felt sure that my deliverance would come through you, and that in my supreme peril God would send you, my own knight, to rescue me." "For my part, Diane," said Gabriel, "the thought of you has always led me on as a lover and guided my steps like a ray of light. Shall I make a confession to you and to my own conscience? Although many other potent motives might have urged me on, I never should have conceived the idea of taking Calais, Diane, which is mine alone, nor should I ever have had the courage to carry it out by resorting to such reckless expedients, had it not been that you were a prisoner here, and that my prophetic instinct of the danger which beset you encouraged and stimulated me. Except for my hope of rescuing you and the other holy purpose for which I live, Calais would still be in English hands. May God, in His mercy, not chastise me for having wished to do and having done what was right for selfish reasons only!" Gabriel thought at that moment of the scene in the Rue St. Jacques, of the self-abnegation of Ambroise Paré, and the stern belief of the admiral that Heaven demands unstained hands to sustain a pure cause. But Diane's beloved voice restored his confidence somewhat as she exclaimed,-- "God chastise you, Gabriel! God chastise you for being noble and generous!" "Who knows?" said he, casting upward a look heavy with sad foreboding, as if he were asking the question of Heaven. "_I_ know," replied Diane, with a lovely smile. She was so bewitching as she said it that Gabriel, in admiration of her beauty, and lost to every other thought, could not restrain the exclamation,-- "Oh, Diane, you are as beautiful as an angel!" "And you as valiant as a hero, Gabriel," said Diane. They were seated side by side; their hands touched by accident and met in a fervent clasp. Darkness was beginning to fall. Diane, with blushing cheeks, rose and walked away a few steps. "Are you going, Diane? You are flying from me!" said the youth, sadly. "Oh, no indeed!" said she eagerly, drawing near again. "With you it is very different; and I have no fear, dearest." Diane was wrong; it was a different sort of danger that threatened her now, but danger nevertheless; and it might be that the friend was as much to be feared as the foe.