Page:The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French (1910).djvu/169

Beauty and the Beast 'Sure of what?' asked Beauty.

'That you love me?'

'Let us go back to supper,' said Beauty, raising his head.

'Yes, let us go back to supper,' agreed the Beast, lifting himself heavily on her arm. He still leaned on her, as they walked back to the palace together. But the supper—which they found laid for two—seemed to revive him, and in his old stupid way he asked her about the time she had spent at home, and if her father and brothers and sisters had been glad to see her.

Beauty, though weary enough after her search through the park and gardens, brisked herself up to tell of all that had happened to her in her absence. The Beast sat nodding his head and listening in his old dull way—which somehow seemed to her the most comfortable way in the world. At length he rose to go. But at the doorway he put the old blunt question.

'Beauty, will you marry me?'

'Yes, dear Beast,' said Beauty; and as she said it a blaze of light filled the room. A salvo of artillery sounded, a moment later, from the park. 127