The charming pair trod the
fine sand beneath their feet, listening with childlike delight to the
union of their footsteps, happy in being wrapped by the same ray of a
sunshine that seemed spring-like, in breathing with the same breath
autumnal perfumes laden with vegetable odors which seemed a
nourishment brought by the breezes to their dawning love. Though to
them it may have been a mere circumstance of their fortuitous meeting,
yet the sky, the landscape, the season of the year, did communicate to
their emotions a tinge of melancholy gravity which gave them an
element of passion. They praised the weather and talked of its beauty;
then of their strange encounter, of the coming rupture of an
intercourse so delightful; of the ease with which, in travelling,
friendships, lost as soon as made, are formed. After this last remark,
the young man profited by what seemed to be a tacit permission to make
a few tender confidences, and to risk an avowal of love like a man who
was not unaccustomed to such situations.
"Have you noticed, mademoiselle," he said, "how little the feelings of
the heart follow the old conventional rules in the days of terror in
which we live? Everything about us bears the stamp of suddenness. We
love in a day, or we hate on the strength of a single glance. We are
bound to each other for life in a moment, or we part with the celerity
of death itself.
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