all were vague, indeterminate, transparent, steeped in a felicity amidst which everything seemed to faint away.  Languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer’s night, as it fades on the bare shoulder of some fair girl, a scarce perceptible murmur of love sinking into silence, lingered beneath the motionless branches, unstirred by the slightest zephyr.  It was hymeneal solitude, a chamber where Nature lay hidden in the embraces of the sun.

Albine and Serge stood there in an ecstasy of joy.  As soon as the tree had received them beneath its shade, they felt eased of all the anxious disquiet which had so long distressed them.  The fears which had made them avoid each other, the fierce wrestling of spirit which had torn and wounded them, without consciousness on their part of what they were really contending against, vanished, and left them in perfect peace.  Absolute confidence, supreme serenity, now pervaded them, they yielded unhesitatingly to the joy of being together in that lonely nook, so completely hidden from the outside world.  They had surrendered themselves to the garden, they awaited in all calmness the behests of that tree of life.  It enveloped them in such ecstasy of love that the whole clearing seemed to disappear from before their eyes, and to leave them wrapped in an atmosphere of perfume.

‘The air is like ripe fruit,’ murmured Albine.

And Serge whispered in his turn:  ’The grass seems so full of life and motion, that I could almost think I was treading on your dress.’

It was a kind of religious feeling which made them lower their voices.  No sentiment of curiosity impelled them to raise their heads and scan the tree.  The consciousness of its majesty weighed heavily upon them.  With a glance Albine asked whether she had overrated the enchantment of the greenery, and Serge answered her with two tears that trickled down his cheeks.  The joy that filled them at being there could not be expressed in words.

‘Come,’ she whispered in his ear, in a voice that was softer than a sigh.

And she glided on in front of him, and seated herself at the very foot of the tree.  Then, with a fond smile, she stretched out her hands to him; while he, standing before her, grasped them in his own with a responsive smile.  Then she drew him slowly towards her and he sank down by her side.

‘Ah! do you remember,’ he said, ’that wall which seemed to have grown up between us?  Now there is nothing to keep us apart—­you are not unhappy now?’

‘No, no,’ she answered; ‘very happy.’

For a moment they relapsed into silence whilst soft emotion stole over them.  Then Serge, caressing Albine, exclaimed:  ’Your face is mine; your eyes, your mouth, your cheeks are mine.  Your arms are mine, from your shoulders to the tips of your nails.  You are wholly mine.’  And as he spoke he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks.  He kissed her arms, with quick short kisses, from her fingers to her shoulders.  He poured upon her a rain of kisses hot as a summer shower, deluging her cheeks, her forehead, her lips, and her neck.