“It was not so hard, after all, to win what was already yours, Pierre, was it?” said she with a smile and a look of unutterable sweetness; “but it was well you asked, for without asking you would be like one possessing a treasure of gold in his field without knowing it, although it was all the while there and all his own. But not a grain of it would you have found without asking me, Pierre!”
“But having found it I shall never lose it again, darling!” replied he, pressing her to his bosom.
“Never, Pierre, it is yours forever!” replied she, her voice trembling with emotion. “Love is, I think, the treasure in heaven which rusts not, and which no thief can steal.”
“Amélie,” said he after a few minutes' silence, “some say men's lives are counted not by hours but by the succession of ideas and emotions. If it be so, I have lived a century of happiness with you this afternoon. I am old in love, Amélie!”
“Nay, I would not have you old in love, Pierre! Love is the perennial youth of the soul. Grand'mère St. Pierre, who has been fifty years an Ursuline, and has now the visions which are promised to the old in the latter days, tells me that in heaven those who love God and one another grow ever more youthful; the older the more beautiful! Is not that better than the philosophers teach, Pierre?”
He drew her closer, and Amélie permitted him to impress a kiss on each eyelid as she closed it; suddenly she started up.
“Pierre,” said she, “you said you were a soldier and so practical. I feel shame to myself for being so imaginative and so silly. I too would be practical if I knew how. This was to be a day of business with us, was it not, Pierre?”
“And is it not a day of business, Amélie? or are we spending it like holiday children, wholly on pleasure? But after all, love is the business of life, and life is the business of eternity,—we are transacting it to-day, Amélie! I never was so seriously engaged as at this moment, nor you either, darling; tell the truth!”
Amélie pressed her hands in his. “Never, Pierre, and yet I cannot see the old brown woods of Belmont rising yonder upon the slopes of St. Foye without remembering my promise, not two hours old, to talk with you to-day about the dear old mansion.”
“That is to be the nest of as happy a pair of lovers as ever went to housekeeping; and I promised to keep soberly by your side as I am doing,” said he, mischievously twitching a stray lock of her dark hair, “and talk with you on the pretty banks of the Lairet about the old mansion.”