Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/149

Rh He promised to bring me to her feet, as loving and as loyal as her heart could desire.

"How soon?"

"This very day. The happy moment is near at hand. You have but to express your wish, and your lover will stand before you."

She needed no further explanation, but understood at once that I was at the door, and flew impetuously towards it as I entered. In a moment we were clasped in each other's arms and embracing one another with that lavish tenderness which, after a separation of three long months, is such unspeakable bliss to all true lovers. Our sighs, our broken exclamations, the countless endearing names that fell from her lips and my own, and were repeated again and again with fond reiteration—such, for many minutes, were the elements of a scene which M. de T contemplated with unfeigned emotion.

"You fill me with envy," he said, as he offered us seats. "I would resign the most glorious career that Fortune could offer me to possess a mistress as lovely, as passionately devoted as yours."

"And have I not, too, felt that all the power and glory the world could give were as nothing to the happiness of being loved by her?" was my reply.

I need scarcely say that the deepest tenderness charac-