Albine and Serge lingered amongst the lilies till evening.  They felt so happy there, and seemed to break out into a new life.  Serge felt the last trace of fever leave his hands, while Albine grew quite white, with a milky whiteness untinted by any rosy hue.  They were unconscious that their arms and necks and shoulders were bare, and their straying unconfined hair in nowise troubled them.  They laughed merrily one at the other, with frank open laughter.  The expression of their eyes retained the limpid calmness of clear spring water.  When they quitted the lilies, their feelings were but those of children ten years old; it seemed to them that they had just met each other in that garden so that they might be friends for ever and amuse themselves with perpetual play.  And as they returned through the parterre, the very flowers bore themselves discreetly, as though they were glad to see their childishness, and would do nothing that might corrupt them.  The forests of peonies, the masses of carnations, the carpets of forget-me-nots, the curtains of clematis now steeped in the atmosphere of evening, slumbering in childlike purity akin to their own, no longer spread suggestions of voluptuousness around them.  The pansies looked up at them with their little candid faces, like playfellows; and the languid mignonette, as Albine’s white skirt brushed by it, seemed full of compassion, and held its breath lest it should fan their love prematurely into life.

VIII

At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine.  She slept in a room on the upper floor.  He looked up at her window and saw her throw open the shutters just as she had sprung out of bed.  They laughed merrily as their eyes met.

‘You must not go out to-day,’ said Albine, when she came down.  ’We must stay indoors and rest.  To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off, to a spot where we can have a very jolly time.’

‘But sha’n’t we grow tired of stopping here?’ muttered Serge.

‘Oh, dear no!  I will tell you stories.’

They passed a delightful day.  The windows were thrown wide open, and all the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.  Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he imagined he had been born.  He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon having everything explained to him.  The plaster Cupids who sported round the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie Albine’s sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a man who was turning somersaults with his head downward.  Albine clapped her hands, and said that he looked like a cockchafer fastened by a string.  Then, as though seized by an access of pity, she said, ’No, no, unfasten him.  It prevents him from flying.’

But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly attracted Serge’s attention.  He fidgeted at not being able to make out what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim.  Helped by Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had climbed upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.