His joy was extinguished; back into his desert he plunged, no longer finding there the flowers with which he had embellished it.

With that prescience of sorrows which characterizes the angel charged to soften them--who is, no doubt, the Charity of heaven--Gabrielle instantly divined the pain she had caused.

She was so vividly aware of her fault that she prayed for the power of God to lay bare her soul to Etienne, for she knew the cruel pang a reproach or a stern look was capable of causing; and she artlessly betrayed to him these clouds as they rose in her soul,--the golden swathings of her dawning love.

One tear which escaped her eyes turned Etienne's pain to pleasure, and he inwardly accused himself of tyranny.

It was fortunate for both that in the very beginning of their love they should thus come to know the diapason of their hearts; they avoided henceforth a thousand shocks which might have wounded them.
Etienne, impatient to entrench himself behind an occupation, led Gabrielle to a table before the little window at which he himself had suffered so long, and where he was henceforth to admire a flower more dainty than all he had hitherto studied.