They trembled apart, though together they quivered beneath the rays of the same hope.

They seemed to fear themselves, conscious that each only too surely belonged to the other.

Emmanuel trembled lest he should touch the hand of the sovereign to whom he had made a shrine of his heart; a chance contact would have roused hopes that were too ardent, he could not then have mastered the force of his passion.

And yet, while neither bestowed the vast, though trivial, the innocent and yet all-meaning signs of love that even timid lovers allow themselves, they were so firmly fixed in each other's hearts that both were ready to make the greatest sacrifices, which were, indeed, the only pleasures their love could expect to taste.
Since Madame Claes's death this hidden love was shrouded in mourning.
The tints of the sphere in which it lived, dark and dim from the first, were now black; the few lights were veiled by tears.

Marguerite's reserve changed to coldness; she remembered the promise exacted by her mother.