Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (French III).djvu/156

146 it, I rubbed my eyes, thinking they must have deceived me.

"I read the letter over again from the beginning to the end; I read it through; I read it all over again and again. I began again at the last line and went up to the first; I could not believe it. My legs shook a little under me; I felt a peculiar quivering of the skin of my face, and I rubbed my cheeks with rum, and put some in the hollow of my hands. I was really ashamed of myself for being such a child—but it was only the affair of a moment. I went on deck to take a little air.

"Laurette was that day so pretty, that I would not go near her. She had on a little simple white dress, her arms bare to her neck, and her long hair flowing, as she always wore it. She was amusing herself with dipping her other dress into the sea, from the end of a cord, and laughed to see that the ocean was as tranquil and pure as a spring of which she could see the bottom.

"'Come and see the sand! come quick!' she cried, and her husband leaned upon her and bent over, but did not look at the water, for he was looking at her with a touching air of tenderness. I made a sign to the young man to come to speak to me on the quarter-deck. She turned round,—I don't know how I looked, but she let her rope drop, and grasped him convulsively by the arm, saying, 'Oh, don't go! he is so pale!' That