‘Come now, be brave,’ insisted Albine.  ’You know you promised me to take five steps.  We’ll go as far as the mulberry tree there under the window——­ There you can rest.’

It took him a quarter of an hour to make those five steps.  After each effort he stopped as if he had been obliged to tear up roots that held him to the ground.

The girl, pushing him along, said with a laugh:  ’You look just like a walking tree.’

Having placed him with his back leaning against the mulberry tree, in the rain of sunlight falling from its boughs, she bounded off and left him, calling out to him that he must not stir.  Serge, standing there with drooping hands, slowly turned his head towards the park.  Terrestrial childhood met his gaze.  The pale greenery was steeped in the very milk of youth, flooded with golden brightness.  The trees were still in infancy, the flowers were as tender-fleshed as babes, the streams were blue with the artless blue of lovely infantile eyes.  Beneath every leaf was some token of a delightful awakening.

Serge had fixed his eyes upon a yellow breach which a wide path made in front of him amidst a dense mass of foliage.  At the very end, eastward, some meadows, steeped in gold, looked like the luminous field upon which the sun would descend, and he waited for the morn to take that path and flow towards him.  He could feel it coming in a warm breeze, so faint at first that it barely brushed across his skin, but rising little by little, and growing ever brisker till he was thrilled all over.  He could also taste it coming with a more and more pronounced savour, bringing the healthful acridity of the open air, holding to his lips a feast of sugary aromatics, sour fruits, and milky shoots.  Further, he could smell it coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way—­the scent of earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to bring on dizziness.  He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid flight of a bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from silence, giving voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the music of things and beings.  Finally, he could see it coming from the end of the path, from the meadows steeped in gold—­yes, he could see that rosy air, so bright that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming smile, no bigger in the distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few swift bounds transformed into the very splendour of the sun.  And the morn flowed up and beat against the mulberry tree against which Serge was leaning.  And he himself resuscitated amidst the childhood of the morn.

‘Serge!  Serge!’ cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of the flower garden.  ‘Don’t be afraid, I am here.’