of love.  Flowers rambled all along the sun-streaked path, faces peeped out everywhere to court the passing breezes.  Bright were the smiles under the spreading tent of the glade.  Not a flower that bloomed the same:  the roses differed in the fashion of their wooing.  Some, shy and blushing, would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open, seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons.  There were pert, gay little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones, bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the white traces of the powder-puff could be espied; there were virtuous maids who had donned low-necked garb like demure bourgeoises; and aristocratic ladies, graceful and original, who contrived attractive deshabilles.  And the cup-like roses offered their perfume as in precious crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip drop by drop; the round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even breath of slumbering flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their petals and only sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.

‘I love you, I love you,’ softly repeated Serge.

Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the morning.  Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite.  She was fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume that was yet faint and cool.  Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her to his breast.  Albine laughed.

The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird’s rhythmic notes, enraptured Serge.

‘What, that lovely song is yours?’ he said.  ’It is the sweetest I ever heard.  You are indeed my joy.’

Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones.  It was an endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music celebrating the delight of awakening love.  And everything—­the roses, the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou—­laughed in that laugh of woman just born to beauty and to love.  Till now the vast garden had lacked one charm—­a winning voice which should prove the living mirth of the trees, the streams, and the sunlight.  Now the vast garden was endowed with that charm of laughter.

‘How old are you?’ asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint expiring note.

‘Nearly twenty-six,’ Serge answered.

She was amazed.  What! he was twenty-six!  He, too, was astonished at having made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not yet lived a day—­an hour.

‘And how old are you?’ he asked in his turn.

‘Oh, I am sixteen.’