What a happy, delicious day that was!  The sun came in from the right, far away from the alcove.  Throughout the morning Serge watched it creeping onward.  He could see it coming towards him, yellow as gold, perching here and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners, at times gliding along the ground like a strip of ribbon.  It was a slow deliberate march, the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden limbs, drawing nigh to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous lingering, which roused intense desire.  At length, towards two o’clock, the sheet of sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the coverlet, and spread over the bed like loosened locks of hair.  To its glowing fondling Serge surrendered his wasted hands:  with his eyes half-closed, he could feel fiery kisses thrilling each of his fingers; he lay in a bath of light, in the embrace of a glowing orb.  And when Albine leaned over smiling, ‘Let me be,’ he stammered, his eyes now shut; ’don’t hold me so tightly.  How do you manage to hold me like this in your arms?’

But the sun crept down the bed again and slowly retreated to the left; and as Serge watched it bend once more and settle on chair after chair, he bitterly regretted that he had not kept it to his breast.  Albine still sat upon the side of the bed, and the pair of them, an arm round each other’s neck, watched the slow paling of the sky.  At times a mighty thrill seemed to make it blanch.  Serge’s languid eyes now wandered over it more freely and detected in it exquisite tints of which he had never dreamed.  It was not all blue, but rosy blue, lilac blue, tawny blue, living flesh, vast and spotless nudity heaving like a woman’s bosom in the breeze.  At every glance into space he found a fresh surprise —­unknown nooks, coy smiles, bewitching rounded outlines, gauzy veils which were cast over the mighty, glorious forms of goddesses in the depths of peeping paradises.  And with his limbs lightened by suffering he winged his way amid that shimmering silk, that stainless down of azure.  The sun sank lower and lower, the blue melted into purest gold, the sky’s living flesh gleamed fairer still, and then was slowly steeped in all the hues of gloom.  Not a cloud—­nought but gradual disappearance, a disrobing which left behind it but a gleam of modesty on the horizon.  And at last the broad sky slumbered.

‘Oh, the dear baby!’ exclaimed Albine, as she looked at Serge, who had fallen asleep upon her neck at the same time as the heavens.

She laid him down in bed and shut the windows.  Next morning, however, they were opened at break of day.  Serge could no longer live without the sunlight.  His strength was growing, he was becoming accustomed to the gusts of air which sent the alcove curtains flying.  Even the azure, the everlasting azure, began to pall upon him.  He grew weary of being white and swanlike, of ever swimming on heaven’s limpid lake.  He came to wish for a pack of black