Love, like the sunlight, shone aslant the dark places of the prospect and filled them with warmth.
Sacrifice for her he loved took on the beauty of the peaks, cold but lovely; and hope and courage, like the clear blue of the vault above, looked smiling down on the brief dangers and the brief troubles of man's making.
The clock of St.Gervais was striking eleven as, still in exalted mood, he turned his back on the view and entered the house in the Corraterie.
He had entered on his return from his fruitless visit to Blondel, and had satisfied himself that Anne was safe.

Doubtless she was still safe, for the house was quiet.
In his new mood he was almost inclined to quarrel with this.

In the ardour of his passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate, the peril present, that he might prove to her how much he loved her, how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her.

To die on the hearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for a moment the thing most desirable--the purest happiness! That was denied him.

The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonly was.