Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!... How much? Ever so much,—gouôs conm caze!... Yet she seems to doubt him,—repeating her question over and over:
—"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
And all the while,—gently, caressingly, imperceptibly,—she draws him a little nearer to the side of the path, nearer to the black waving of the ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that rises from beyond them:
—"Ess ou ainmein moin?"
—"Oui, oui!" he responds,—"ou save ça!—oui, chè doudoux, ou save ça!"...
And she, suddenly,—turning at once to him and to the last red light, the goblin horror of her face transformed,—shrieks with a burst of hideous laughter:
—"Atò, bô!"[17]
For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:—then, smitten to the brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward falling, crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain torrent.
[17]"Kiss me now!"
