But he shook his head.  Then they went away together, still holding each other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more.  Serge gazed down askance at Albine’s face, and she felt perturbed beneath his glance.  They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape the uneasiness of a longer walk.  But, in spite of themselves, as though impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full sunlight.  They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender.  Now they were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter, penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian, clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations.  Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores, dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they reeled and tottered one against the other.

‘Shall I hold you up?’ Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning heavily upon him.

He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his grasp, and drew a long breath.

‘No; you stifle me,’ she said.  ’Leave me alone.  I don’t know what is the matter with me.  The ground seems to give way under my feet.  It is there I feel the pain.’

She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast.  Then Serge turned quite pale.  He was even more overcome than she.  And both had tears in their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them.  Were they going to die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?

‘Come and sit down in the shade,’ said Serge.  ’It is these plants which are poisoning us with their noxious odours.’

He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and trembled when he but touched her wrist.  It was beneath a fine cedar, whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that she seated herself.  Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver; evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red.  There was a weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular arms resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent.  In this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness.  The atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the odorous trees.

‘Are you not going to sit down?’ said Albine.

And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped back and remained standing.  Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly:  ’No, I am more feverish even than you are; I should make you hot.  If I wasn’t afraid of hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that we should no longer feel any pain.’