Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/154

Beauty and the Beast She ought, you will say, to have been happy as the day was long. But no: a life becomes flat and stale which is a perpetual round of pleasure and leaves nothing to sigh or to hope for. Beauty began to long for a sight of her father and her brothers and sisters. She concealed this for a while, however, and turned her thoughts to what was more pressing; for she could not beg leave to go home until something had been done to rescue her dear Unknown and restore him to liberty. The Beast alone (she reflected) could tell her the secret; and she thought to herself that, being himself so blunt of speech, he would forgive some bluntness in her. So one evening she asked him point-blank: 'Beast, are we alone in this palace, with nobody but ourselves?'

'Of course we are,' he answered gruffly; but the question appeared in some way to sting him, for almost at once he rose and bade her good night.

Now Beauty, whatever else she thought of the Beast, had by this time learnt to trust him for honest. It was a dreadful disappointment, therefore, to be forced to believe on his word that her 114