We two were alone in the garden. The moon spread beauty
over the broken walls of the chateau on one side, and the green
vegetation around us leaving some places in mysterious shade. The
sun-dial was all in light, and so was mademoiselle standing beside it. I
breathed sweet wild odors from the garden. From some part of the chateau
came the soft twang of the strings responding to the fingers of the
gypsy, I held the soft hand of mademoiselle. I raised it to my lips.
"I love you, I love you!" I whispered.
She made no answer, only looked at me with a kind of mingled grief and
joy, bliss embittered by despair.
"It cannot be," I went on, "that Heaven would permit so great a love to
find no response. Will you not answer me, mademoiselle?"
"What answer would you have?" she asked, in a perturbed voice.
"I would have love for love."
Her answer was arrested by the sound of the gypsy's voice, which at that
instant rose in an old song, that one in which a woman's love is likened
to a light or a fire. These are the first words:
"Bright as the sun, more quick to fade;
Fickle as marsh-lights prove;
Where brightest, casting deepest shade--
False flame of woman's love."
"Heed the song, monsieur," said mademoiselle, in the tone of one who
warns vaguely of a danger which dare not be disclosed openly.
"It is an old, old song," I answered. "The raving of some misanthrope of
bygone time.
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