Imagine to yourself an abyss, and in its centre an oasis of light, and in this oasis two creatures shut out of life, dazzling each other.  No purity could be compared to their loves.  Dea was ignorant what a kiss might be, though perhaps she desired it; because blindness, especially in a woman, has its dreams, and though trembling at the approaches of the unknown, does not fear them all.  As to Gwynplaine, his sensitive youth made him pensive.  The more delirious he felt, the more timid he became.  He might have dared anything with this companion of his early youth, with this creature as innocent of fault as of the light, with this blind girl who saw but one thing—­that she adored him!  But he would have thought it a theft to take what she might have given; so he resigned himself with a melancholy satisfaction to love angelically, and the conviction of his deformity resolved itself into a proud purity.

These happy creatures dwelt in the ideal.  They were spouses in it at distances as opposite as the spheres.  They exchanged in its firmament the deep effluvium which is in infinity attraction, and on earth the sexes.  Their kisses were the kisses of souls.

They had always lived a common life.  They knew themselves only in each other’s society.  The infancy of Dea had coincided with the youth of Gwynplaine.  They had grown up side by side.  For a long time they had slept in the same bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber.  They lay on the chest, Ursus on the floor; that was the arrangement.  One fine day, whilst Dea was still very little, Gwynplaine felt himself grown up, and it was in the youth that shame arose.  He said to Ursus, “I will also sleep on the floor.”  And at night he stretched himself, with the old man, on the bear skin.  Then Dea wept.  She cried for her bed-fellow; but Gwynplaine, become restless because he had begun to love, decided to remain where he was.  From that time he always slept by the side of Ursus on the planks.  In the summer, when the nights were fine, he slept outside with Homo.

When thirteen, Dea had not yet become resigned to the arrangement.  Often in the evening she said, “Gwynplaine, come close to me; that will put me to sleep.”  A man lying by her side was a necessity to her innocent slumbers.

Nudity is to see that one is naked.  She ignored nudity.  It was the ingenuousness of Arcadia or Otaheite.  Dea untaught made Gwynplaine wild.  Sometimes it happened that Dea, when almost reaching youth, combed her long hair as she sat on her bed—­her chemise unfastened and falling off revealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague commencement of Eve—­and would call Gwynplaine.  Gwynplaine blushed, lowered his eyes, and knew not what to do in presence of this innocent creature.  Stammering, he turned his head, feared, and fled.  The Daphnis of darkness took flight before the Chloe of shadow.

Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy.

Ursus said to them,—­“Old brutes, adore each other!”