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174 find you at the convent, but you were gone: only by the chance of meeting with a friend who saw the duke’s carriage standing here have I found you.”

“You were seeking for me?”

“Yes, I was seeking for you.”

I spoke slowly, as though hours were open for our talk; but suddenly I remembered that at any moment the old witch might return. And I had much to say before she came.

“Marie” I began eagerly, never thinking that the name she had come to bear in my thoughts could be new and strange from my lips. But the moment I had uttered it I perceived what I had done, for she drew back further, gazing at me with inquiring eyes, and her breath seemed arrested. Then, answering the question in her eyes, I said simply:

“For what else am I here, Marie?” and I caught her hand in my left hand.

She stood motionless, still silently asking what I would. And I kissed her hand. And again the low cry, lower still—half a cry and half a sigh—came from her, and she drew timidly nearer to me; and I drew her yet nearer, whispering, in a broken word or two, that I loved her.

But she, still dazed, looked up at me, whispering, “When, when?”

And I could not tell her when I had come to love her, for I did not know then—nor can I recollect now; nor have I any opinion about it, save that it speaks ill for me that it was not when first I set my eyes upon her. But she