One day, about noon, Serge heard Albine returning in hot haste.  He had restrained himself from listening for her steps when she went away.  Usually, she did not return till late, and he was amazed at her impetuosity as she sped along, forcing her way through the branches that barred her path.  As she passed beneath his window, he heard her laugh; and as she mounted the stairway, she panted so heavily that he almost thought he could feel her hot breath streaming against his face.  She threw the door wide open, and cried out:  ‘I have found it!’

Then she sat down and repeated softly, breathlessly:  ’I have found it!  I have found it!’

Serge, distracted, laid his fingers on her lips, and stammered:  ’Don’t tell me anything, I beg you.  I want to know nothing of it.  It will kill me, if you speak.’

Then she sank into silence with gleaming eyes and lips tightly pressed lest the words she kept back should spring out in spite of her.  And she stayed in the room till evening, trying to meet Serge’s glance, and imparting to him, each time that their eyes met, something of that which she had discovered.  Her whole face beamed with radiance, she exhaled a delicious odour, she was full of life; and Serge felt that she permeated him through all his senses.  Despairingly did he struggle against this gradual invasion of his being.

On the morrow she returned to his room as soon as she was up.

‘Aren’t you going out?’ he asked, conscious that he would be vanquished should she remain there.

‘No,’ she said; she wasn’t going out any more.  As by degrees she recovered from her fatigue he felt her becoming stronger, more triumphant.  She would soon be able to take him by the hand and drag him to that spot, whose charm her silence proclaimed so loudly.  That day, however, she did not speak; she contented herself with keeping him seated on a cushion at her feet.  It was not till the next morning that she ventured to say:  ’Why do you shut yourself up here?  It is so pleasant under the trees.’

He rose from her feet, and stretched out his arms entreatingly.  But she laughed at him.

’Well, well, then, we won’t go out, since you would rather not. . . .  But this room has such a strange scent, and we should be much more comfortable in the garden.  It is very wrong of you to have taken such a dislike to it.’

He had again settled himself at her feet in silence, his eyelids lowered, his features quivering with passionate emotion.

‘We won’t go out,’ she repeated, ’so don’t worry.  But do you really prefer these pictures to the grass and flowers in the park?  Do you remember all we saw together?  It is these paintings which make us feel so unhappy.  They are a nuisance, always looking and watching us as they do.’

As Serge gradually leant more closely against her, she passed her arm round his neck and laid his head upon her lap, while murmuring in yet a lower tone:  ’There is a little corner there I know, where we might be so very happy.  Nothing would trouble us there; the fresh air would cool your feverishness.’