Page:Des Grieux, The Prelude to Teleny.djvu/48

 all the delight of a hound that sees his master shoulder his gun.

Noiselessly and flittingly the young girl hurried out of the room, went down the stairs, without stumbling or groping for her way, just as if it had been in the broad day-light. She reached the small door opening on the yard, deftly unlocked and unbolted it, and stepped out, followed by the dog.

The night was perfectly dark and sultry, the sky was covered with a mass of lowering clouds, the air was pregnant with electricity.

The young girl with her white diaphanous dress, her hyacinthine hair, the opaline lustre of her complexion, seemed in the darkness to shine with a phosphorescent light.

A man was at the door, it was the youth of the round-about. Seeing her, he uttered a stifled cry, stretched out his arms to receive her, and then strained her to his breast. He pressed his burning mouth on her cold languid lips, and kissed her passionately. After a few seconds,—"Come with me," said the youth, "here we might be seen; come under my tent."