“It has been true a long time,” she answered softly,—“a long time, dearest Paul.”
Her voice lingered on the name. It was the first that I had heard it from her lips.
“But not so long as I,” I protested. “I have loved you from the moment I saw you in the Rue Gogard. And you?”
She was smiling up at me with infinite tenderness.
“I have thought of no other man since then,” she said.
Again I looked out over the plain. This time the gleam of the camp-fires caught my eyes, and with a start I remembered my errand.
“Sweetheart,” I said, summoning all my courage, “we must go down. M. le Comte awaits us. I pledged him I would hasten. M. le Roquefort may even now be dead. He loves you, I think, but not as I!”
“No, not as you!”
She was looking up into my eyes, radiant with love and happiness. Never was there other woman like her!
Yet we lingered for a time, as our parents must have lingered at the gate of Eden. But at last we reached the plain, and made our way to the camp and to the tent of M. le Comte.