The Twin Lieutenants

praised, and there appeared a white form having, thanks to the gauze which wrapped it and its flexibility of movements, all the fantastic aspect of a shade.

The figure stopped an instant in the door, as in an encasement of shadows; then with a step so light, so aerial, that the silence was not broken even by the creak of the floor, she slowly approached Napoleon.

When near him, she held out from a cloud of muslin a charming hand which she placed upon the back of the chair, near that head which seemed one of the Roman emperors; she sometime kept her eyes upon the visage, calm as a medal of Augustus, uttered a half retained sigh, laid her left hand upon her heart to compress its beatings, bent over, retaining her breath, kissed the sleeper's brow more with her breath than with her lips, and feeling at that contact, all light as it was, a quiver of the muscles of that face, before so immovable that one would think it a wax mask, she drew herself quickly back.

The motion she had provoked, how