“Alba!” He took her hand and kissed it. It was very sweet to be so near him, Alba thought. They walked on together, hand in hand, without speaking for a while. The grass was soft beneath their feet, and the trembling sunbeams stole through the trees and touched their faces with golden shadows, thrilling and pure and full of gladness, as the touch of nature is when it stirs the chords of young vibrating hearts. “If I could but comfort him!” she was thinking, till the thought grew so loud within her she feared he would overhear it. But we are deaf to those voices that lie “upon the other side of silence.” Hermann, as he held the warm, soft hand within his own, was wondering how it came to pass that yonder on the barren cliffs a flower so rare and delicate had grown, and been trained to so much grace and ease by a woman who was called Mère Virginie. Then he remembered his father’s words about the royal flower on the plebeian stem, and, thinking of him, he sighed. Alba looked up quickly, offering all her soul’s wealth of sympathy through her eyes, and Hermann bethought to himself how delightful it would be to have this sympathetic creature always at his side. But he thought also of the emperor and the world, and wondered what these potentates would say were he to pick up the jewel from the dust and set it in his coronet. Bonaparte had a way of choosing mates for his officers as he chose sites for his battles, and ordering them to marry as he ordered them to charge; but Hermann felt he was not one to be cowed by the imperial match-maker, and there was something rather inspiriting in the idea of defying the despot if he attempted to meddle with his life outside the camp. Why should he not gather this wild flower, if he chose? Had his father lived, it would have been different; but now he was free, there was no one to whom he need sacrifice the promptings of his heart, be they wise or foolish. The world and the court might laugh; it was not from amongst them he cared to take a wife; he wanted to be loved, to be wed for his own sake, and not for the good things he had to offer. But did Alba love him?
“Alba,” he said, “now that Marcel is gone, who is to be the favored suitor?”
“No one, monseigneur; I told you so before.”
“But I did not believe you. I don’t believe you now.”
“Why should I tell you a lie? I never told one in my life.”
She spoke without anger or offended pride; but Hermann saw that he had pained her, and there was a purity of truth about her that rebuked his denial, though it was spoken in jest.
“Forgive me, dearest! I wanted to hear you say it again. I wanted to be certain there was no one else you cared for.”
He bent toward her caressingly, and, looking under her hood, saw two big tears slowly trickling down her cheeks.
“Alba....”
What an idle boast seems this about the freedom of the human will! Our most pregnant words, our weightiest actions, spring far oftener from impulse than from deliberate resolve; a touch, light as the feather floating on the summer breeze, will stir the fountain and make its waters overflow; a word spoken when we had meant to be silent will change the current of our life, and push us to a step that can never be retraced. An hour ago Hermann de Gondriac no more dreamed of offering his hand to Alba than he did of burying himself in the Grande Chartreuse; but those two tears were the drops that made the fountain overflow, and, in the sudden flood of tenderness, pride, prudence, everything but love was swept away.