‘Speak to me,’ implored Albine.  ’You have never spoken to me like that.  When you were upstairs in your room, when you were not dumb, you talked the silly prattle of a child.  How is it I no longer know your voice?  Just now I thought it had come down from the trees, that it reached me from every part of the garden, that it was one of those deep sighs that used to worry me at night before you came.  Listen, everything is keeping silence to hear you speak again.’

But still he failed to recognise her presence.  Tenderer grew her tones.  ’No, don’t speak if it tires you.  Sit down beside me, and we will remain here on the grass till the sun wanes.  And look, I have found two strawberries.  Such trouble I had too!  The birds eat up everything.  One’s for you, both if you like; or we can halve them, and taste each of them.  You’ll thank me, and then I shall hear you.’

But he would not sit down, he refused the strawberries, which Albine pettishly threw away.  She did not open her lips again.  She would rather have seen him ill, as in those earlier days when she had given him her hand for a pillow, and had felt him coming back to life beneath the cooling breath she blew upon his face.  She cursed the returning health which now made him stand in the light like a young unheeding god.  Would he be ever thus then, with never a glance for her?  Would he never be further healed, and at last see her and love her?  And she dreamed of once again being his healer, of accomplishing by the sole power of her little hands the cure of the second childhood in which he remained.  She could clearly see that there was no spark in the depths of his grey eyes, that his was but a pallid beauty like that of the statues which had fallen among the nettles of the flower-garden.  She rose and clasped him, breathing on his neck to rouse him.  But that morning Serge never even felt the breath that lifted his silky beard.  The sun got low, it was time to go indoors.  On reaching his room, Albine burst into tears.

From that morning forward the invalid took a short walk in the garden every day.  He went past the mulberry tree, as far as the edge of the terrace, where a wide flight of broken steps descended to the flowery parterre.  He grew accustomed to the open air, each bath of sunlight brought him fresh vigour.  A young chestnut tree, which had sprung from some fallen nut between two stones of the balustrade, burst the resin of its buds, and unfolded its leafy fans with far less vigour than he progressed.  One day, indeed, he even attempted to descend the steps, but in this his strength failed him, and he sat down among the dane-wort which had grown up between the cracks in the stone flags.  Below, to the left, he could see a small wood of roses.  It was thither that he dreamt of going.

‘Wait a little longer,’ said Albine.  ’The scent of the roses is too strong for you yet.  I have never been able to sit long under the rose-trees without feeling exhausted, light-headed, with a longing to cry.  Don’t be afraid, I will some day lead you to the rose-trees, and I shall surely weep among them, for you make me very sad.’