‘Calm yourself,’ begged Serge, ’there is no one.  You are as crimson as though you had a fever.  Let us rest here for a moment.  Do; I beg you.’

She had no fever at all, she said, but she wanted to get back as quickly as possible, so that no one might laugh at her.  And, ever increasing her pace, she plucked handfuls of leaves and tendrils from the hedges, which she entwined about her.  She fastened a branch of mulberry over her hair, twisted bindweed round her arms, and tied it to her wrists, and circled her neck with such long sprays of laurustinus, that her bosom was hidden as by a veil of leaves.

And that shame of hers proved contagious.  Serge, who first had jested, asking her if she were going to a ball, glanced at himself, and likewise felt alarmed and ashamed, to a point that he also wound foliage about his person.

Meantime, they could discover no way out of the labyrinth of bushes, but all at once, at the end of the path, they found themselves face to face with an obstacle, a tall, grey, grave mass of stone.  It was the wall of the Paradou.

‘Come away! come away!’ cried Albine.

And she sought to drag him thence; but they had not taken another twenty steps before they again came upon the wall.  They then skirted it at a ran, panic-stricken.  It stretched along, gloomy and stern, without a break in its surface.  But suddenly, at a point where it fringed a meadow, it seemed to fall away.  A great breach gaped in it, like a huge window of light opening on to the neighbouring valley.  It must have been the very hole that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had blocked up with brambles and stones.  But the brambles now lay scattered around like severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some distance away, and the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by some furious hand.

XVII

‘Ah!  I felt sure of it,’ cried Albine, in accents of supreme despair.  ’I begged you to take me away—­Serge, I beseech you, don’t look through it.’

But Serge, in spite of himself, stood rooted to the ground, on the threshold of the breach through which he gazed.  Down below, in the depths of the valley, the setting sun cast a sheet of gold upon the village of Les Artaud, which showed vision-like amidst the twilight in which the neighbouring fields were already steeped.  One could plainly distinguish the houses that straggled along the high road; the little yards with their dunghills, and the narrow gardens planted with vegetables.  Higher up, the tall cypress in the graveyard reared its dusky silhouette, and the red tiles on the church glowed brazier-like, the dark bell looking down on them like a human face, while the old parsonage at the side threw its doors and windows open to the evening air.

‘For pity’s sake,’ sobbed Albine, ’don’t look out, Serge.  Remember that you promised you would always love me.  Ah! will you ever love me enough, now?  Stay, let me cover your eyes with my hands.  You know it was my hands that cured you.  You won’t push me away.’