Opal had stolen away from Lucerne and had come up the mountain absolutely unattended. She would share her secret with no one, she said, and Paul had acquiesced. And now he took her up in his arms as one would carry a little child, and bore her off to the suite he had engaged for them. What a bit of a thing she was to wield such an influence over a man's whole life!
A pert little French maid waited upon them. She eyed with great favor the distingué young monsieur, and his charmante épouse! There was a knowing twinkle in her eye—she had not been a femme de chambre even a little while without learning to scent a lune de miel! And this promised to be especially piquante. But Paul would have none of her, and she tripped away disappointed of her coveted divertissement.
Paul was very jealous and exacting and even domineering this morning, and would permit no intrusion. He would take care of madame, he had informed the girl, and when she had taken herself away, he repeated it emphatically. Opal was his little girl, he said, and he was going to pet and coddle her himself. Femme de chambre indeed! Wasn't he worth a dozen of the impertinent French minxes! Wanted to coquette with him, most likely—thought he might be ready to yawn over madame's charms! She could keep her pretty ankles out of his sight—he wasn't interested in them!
How Paul thrilled at the touch of everything Opal wore! Soft delicious things they were, and he handled them with an awkward reverence that brought tears to her eyes. They spoke a strange, shy language of their own—these little, filmy bits of fine linen.
Oh, but it was good, thought Opal, to be taken care of like this!—to be on these familiar terms with the Boy she loved—to give him the right to love her and do these little things, so sacred in a woman's life. And to Paul it meant more than even she guessed. It was such a new world to him. He felt that he was treading on holy ground, and, for the moment, was half-afraid.
And thus began their one day—the one day that was to know no yesterday, and no tomorrow!
They found it hard to remember that part of it at all times. He would grow reminiscent for an instant, and begin, "Do you remember—" and she would catch him up quickly with a whispered, "No yesterday, Paul!" And again, it would be his turn, for a troubled look would cloud the joy of her eyes, and she would start to say, "What shall I do—" or "When I go to Paris—" and Paul would snatch her to his heart and remind her that there was "No tomorrow!"
All the forenoon she lay in his arms, crying out with little inarticulate gurgles of joy under his caresses, lavishing a whole lifetime's concentrated emotion upon him in a ferocity of passion that seemed quenchless.
And Paul was in the seventh heaven—mad with love! He was learning that there were tones in that glorious voice that he had never heard before, depths in those eyes that he had never fathomed—and those tones, those depths, were all for him, for him alone—aye, had been waiting there through all eternity for his awakening touch.
"Opal," he said, earnestly, "perhaps it was here—on this very spot, it may be, who knows—that my mother gave herself to my father!