“And you, my poor darling,” she continued aloud.  “At this very moment you, too, might be lying here under a heap of earth with a wooden cross at your head, just like these poor unfortunates!”

The sub-lieutenant smiled sadly.  Yes, it was so.

“Come here; climb up here!” said Chichi impetuously.  “I want to give you something!”

As soon as he approached her, she flung her arms around his neck, pressed him against the warm softness of her breast, exhaling a perfume of life and love, and kissed him passionately without a thought of her brother, without seeing her aged parents grieving below them and longing to die. . . .  And her skirts, freed by the breeze, molded her figure in the superb sweep of the curves of a Grecian vase.