If Pierre Philibert retained the hand of Amelie for one second
longer than mere friendship required of him, no one perceived it but
God and themselves. Pierre felt it like a revelation--the hand of
Amelie yielding timidly, but not unwillingly, to his manly grasp.
He looked in her face. Her eyes were averted, and she withdrew her
hand quietly but gently, as not upbraiding him.
That moment of time flashed a new influence upon both their lives:
it was the silent recognition that each was henceforth conscious of
the special regard of the other.
There are moments which contain the whole quintessence of our
lives,--our loves, our hopes, our failures, in one concentrated drop
of happiness or misery. We look behind us and see that our whole
past has led up to that infinitesimal fraction of time which is the
consummation of the past in the present, the end of the old and the
beginning of the new. We look forward from the vantage ground of
the present, and the world of a new revelation lies before us.
Pierre Philibert was conscious from that moment that Amelie de
Repentigny was not indifferent to him,--nay, he had a ground of hope
that in time she would listen to his pleadings, and at last bestow
on him the gift of her priceless love.
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