Madame de Bergenheim, with head thrown back and widely opened eyes, looked at him with a more agitated than surprised look.
"It is you," exclaimed he, impulsively, "you whom I had lost and now find again!" "What madness, Monsieur!" she replied, in a low voice, putting out her hand as if to stop him.
"I beg of you, do not look at me so! Let me gaze at you and assure myself that it is really you--I have dreamed of this moment for so long! Have I not paid dear enough for it?
Two months passed away from you--from heaven! Two months of sadness, grief, and unhappiness! But you are pale! Do you suffer, too ?" "Much, at this moment." "Clemence!" "Call me Madame, Monsieur de Gerfaut," she interrupted, severely.
"Why should I disobey you?
Are you not my lady, my queen ?" He bent his knee as a sign of bondage, and tried to seize her hand, which she immediately withdrew.

Madame de Bergenheim seemed to pay very little attention to the words addressed her; her uneasy glances wandered in every direction, into the depths of the bushes and the slightest undulations of the ground.

Gerfaut understood this pantomime.

He glanced, in his turn, over the place, and soon discovered at some distance a more propitious place for such a conversation as theirs.

It was a semicircular recess in one of the thickets in the park.