"Sorrowful! I am so happy it seems impossible that I come from Mittau, and this day the Marquis du Plessy died to me! I wish the sun had been tied to the trees, as the goose girl tied her gander."
"But I want another day," said Eagle. "I want all the days that are my due at home."
We ascended the steps of the stone pavilion, and sat down in an arch like a balcony over the sunken garden. Pears and apricots, their branches flattened against the wall, showed ruddy garnered sunlight through the dusk. The tangled enclosure sloped down to the stream, from which a fairy wisp of mist wavered over flower bed and tree. Dew and herbs and the fragrance of late roses sent up a divine breath, invisibly submerging us, like a tide rising out of the night.
Madame de Ferrier's individual traits were surprised in this nearness, as they never had been when I saw her at a distance in alien surroundings. A swift ripple, involuntary and glad, coursed down her body; she shuddered for joy half a minute or so.
Two feet away, I worshiped her smiling eyes and their curved ivory lids, her rounded head with its abundant cap of hair, her chin, her shoulders, her bust, the hands in her lap, the very sweep of her scant gown about her feet.
The flash of extreme happiness passing, she said gravely,
"But that was a strange thing—that you should fall unconscious!"
"Not so strange," I said; and told her how many times before the eclipse—under the edge of which my boyhood was passed—had completely shadowed me. At the account of Ste. Pélagie she leaned toward me, her hands clenched on her breast. When we came to the Hôtel Dieu she leaned back pallid against the stone.
"Dear Marquis du Plessy!" she whispered, as his name entered the story.
When it was ended she drew some deep breaths in the silence.