out of the quick, in the rhythmic repetition of its steps.  A round skylight pierces the sloping roof up there, and it is the only light for this part of the people’s house, this poor internal city.  The darkness which runs down the walls of the well, whence we are striving to emerge step by step, conceals our laborious climb towards that gap of daylight.  Shadowed and secret as we are, it seems to me that we are mounting to heaven.

Oppressed by a common languor, we at last sat down side by side on a step.  There is no sound in the building under the one round window bending over us.  We lean on each other because of the stair’s narrowness.  Her warmth enters into me; I feel myself agitated by that obscure light which radiates from her.  I share with her the heat of her body and her thought itself.  The darkness deepens round us.  Hardly can I see the crouching girl there, warm and hollowed like a nest.

I call her by her name, very quietly, and it is as though I made a loud avowal!  She turns, and it seems that this is the first time I have seen her naked face.  “Kiss me,” she says; and without speaking we stammer, and murmur, and laugh.

* * * * * *

Together we are looking at a little square piece of paper.  I found it on the seat which the rose-tree overhangs on the edge of the downward lane.  Carefully folded, it had a forgotten look, and it was waiting there, detained for a moment by its timorous weight.  A few lines of careful writing cover it.  We read it: 

“I do not know how speaks the pious heart; nothing I know; th’ enraptured martyr I. Only I know the tears that brimming start, your beauty blended with your smile to espy.”

Then, having read it, we read it again, moved by a mysterious influence.  And we finger the chance-captured paper, without knowing what it is, without understanding very well what it says.

* * * * * *

When I asked her to go with me to the cemetery that Sunday, she agreed, as she does to all I ask her.  I watched her arms brush the roses as she came in through the gardens.  We walked in silence; more and more we are losing the habit of talking to each other.  We looked at the latticed and flower-decked square where our aunt sleeps—­the garden which is only as big as a woman.  Returning from the cemetery by way of the fields, the sun already low, we join hands, seized with triumphant delight.

She is wearing a dress of black delaine, and the skirt, the sleeves and the collar wave in the breeze.  Sometimes she turns her radiant face to me and it seems to grow still brighter when she looks at me.  Slightly stooping, she walks, though among the grass and flowers whose tints and grace shine in reflection on her forehead and cheeks, she is a giantess.  A butterfly precedes us on our path and alights under our eyes, but when we come up it takes wing again, and comes down a little farther and begins all over again; and we smile at the butterfly that thinks of us.