Dea had but to show herself, and all the light that was in Gwynplaine left him and went to her, and behind the dazzled Gwynplaine there was but a flight of phantoms.  What a peacemaker is adoration!  A few minutes afterwards they were sitting opposite each other, Ursus between them, Homo at their feet.  The teapot, hung over a little lamp, was on the table.  Fibi and Vinos were outside, waiting.

They breakfasted as they supped, in the centre compartment.  From the position in which the narrow table was placed, Dea’s back was turned towards the aperture in the partition which was opposite the entrance door of the Green Box.  Their knees were touching.  Gwynplaine was pouring out tea for Dea.  Dea blew gracefully on her cup.  Suddenly she sneezed.  Just at that moment a thin smoke rose above the flame of the lamp, and something like a piece of paper fell into ashes.  It was the smoke which had caused Dea to sneeze.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” replied Gwynplaine.

And he smiled.  He had just burnt the duchess’s letter.

The conscience of the man who loves is the guardian angel of the woman whom he loves.

Unburdened of the letter, his relief was wondrous, and Gwynplaine felt his integrity as the eagle feels its wings.

It seemed to him as if his temptation had evaporated with the smoke, and as if the duchess had crumbled into ashes with the paper.

Taking up their cups at random, and drinking one after the other from the same one, they talked.  A babble of lovers, a chattering of sparrows!  Child’s talk, worthy of Mother Goose or of Homer!  With two loving hearts, go no further for poetry; with two kisses for dialogue, go no further for music.

“Do you know something?”

“No.”

“Gwynplaine, I dreamt that we were animals, and had wings.”

“Wings; that means birds,” murmured Gwynplaine.

“Fools! it means angels,” growled Ursus.

And their talk went on.

“If you did not exist, Gwynplaine?”

“What then?”

“It could only be because there was no God.”

“The tea is too hot; you will burn yourself, Dea.”

“Blow on my cup.”

“How beautiful you are this morning!”

“Do you know that I have a great many things to say to you?”

“Say them.”

“I love you.”

“I adore you.”

And Ursus said aside, “By heaven, they are polite!”

Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence!  In them they gather, as it were, masses of love, which afterwards explode into sweet fragments.

“Do you know!  In the evening, when we are playing our parts, at the moment when my hand touches your forehead—­oh, what a noble head is yours, Gwynplaine!—­at the moment when I feel your hair under my fingers, I shiver; a heavenly joy comes over me, and I say to myself, In all this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of solitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop; and he is there.  It is he—­it is you.”