Inlaid with gold by the slanting sun we lead each other, hand in hand, as far as the statue of Flora, which once upon a time a lord of the manor raised on the fringe of the wood.  Against the abiding background of distant heights the goddess stands, half-naked, in the beautiful ripe light.  Her fair hips are draped with a veil of still whiter stone, like a linen garment.  Before the old moss-mellowed pedestal I pressed Marie desperately to my heart.  Then, in the sacred solitude of the wood, I put my hands upon her, and so that she might be like the goddess I unfastened her black bodice, lowered the ribbon shoulder-straps of her chemise, and laid bare her wide and rounded bosom.

She yielded to the adoration with lowered head, and her eyes magnificently troubled, red-flushing with blood and sunshine.

I put my lips on hers.  Until that day, whenever I kissed her, her lips submitted.  This time she gave me back my long caress, and even her eyes closed upon it.  Then she stands there with her hands crossed on her glorious throat, her red, wet lips ajar.  She stands there, apart, yet united to me, and her heart on her lips.

She has covered her bosom again.  The breeze is suddenly gusty.  The apple trees in the orchards are shaken and scatter bird-like jetsam in space; and in that bright green paddock yonder the rows of out-hung linen dance in the sunshine.  The sky darkens; the wind rises and prevails.  It was that very day of the gale.  It assaults our two bodies on the flank of the hill; it comes out of infinity and sets roaring the tawny forest foliage.  We can see its agitation behind the black grille of the trunks.  It makes us dizzy to watch the swift displacement of the gray-veiled sky, and from cloud to cloud a bird seems hurled, like a stone.  We go down towards the bottom of the valley, clinging to the slope, an offering to the deepest breath of heaven, driven forward yet holding each other back.

So, gorged with the gale and deafened by the universal concert of space that goes through our ears, we find sanctuary on the river bank.  The water flows between trees whose highest foliage is intermingled.  By a dark footpath, soft and damp, under the ogive of the branches, we follow this crystal-paved cloister of green shadow.  We come on a flat-bottomed boat, used by the anglers.  I make Marie enter it, and it yields and groans under her weight.  By the strokes of two old oars we descend the current.

It seems to our hearts and our inventing eyes that the banks take flight on either side—­it is the scenery of bushes and trees which retreats. We—­we abide!  But the boat grounds among tall reeds.  Marie is half reclining and does not speak.  I draw myself towards her on my knees, and the boat quivers as I do.  Her face in silence calls me; she calls me wholly.  With her prostrate body, surrendered and disordered, she calls me.