“Oh! what lovely glow-worms!” exclaimed Sidonie, embarrassed by the oppressive silence broken by so many mysterious sounds.

On the edge of the greensward a blade of grass here and there was illuminated by a tiny, green, flickering light.  She stooped to lift one on her glove.  Georges knelt close beside her; and as they leaned down, their hair and cheeks touching, they gazed at each other for a moment by the light of the glow-worms.  How weird and fascinating she seemed to him in that green light, which shone upon her face and died away in the fine network of her waving hair!  He put his arm around her waist, and suddenly, feeling that she abandoned herself to him, he clasped her in a long, passionate embrace.

“What are you looking for?” asked Claire, suddenly coming up in the shadow behind them.

Taken by surprise, and with a choking sensation in his throat, Georges trembled so that he could not reply.  Sidonie, on the other hand, rose with the utmost coolness, and said as she shook out her skirt: 

“The glow-worms.  See how many of them there are tonight.  And how they sparkle.”

Her eyes also sparkled with extraordinary brilliancy.

“The storm makes them, I suppose,” murmured Georges, still trembling.

The storm was indeed near.  At brief intervals great clouds of leaves and dust whirled from one end of the avenue to the other.  They walked a few steps farther, then all three returned to the house.  The young women took their work, Georges tried to read a newspaper, while Madame Fromont polished her rings and M. Gardinois and his son-in-law played billiards in the adjoining room.

How long that evening seemed to Sidonie!  She had but one wish, to be alone-alone with her thoughts.

But, in the silence of her little bedroom, when she had put out her light, which interferes with dreams by casting too bright an illumination upon reality, what schemes, what transports of delight!  Georges loved her, Georges Fromont, the heir of the factory!  They would marry; she would be rich.  For in that mercenary little heart the first kiss of love had awakened no ideas save those of ambition and a life of luxury.

To assure herself that her lover was sincere, she tried to recall the scene under the trees to its most trifling details, the expression of his eyes, the warmth of his embrace, the vows uttered brokenly, lips to lips, it that weird light shed by the glow-worms, which one solemn moment had fixed forever in her heart.

Oh! the glow-worms of Savigny!

All night long they twinkled like stars before her closed eyes.  The park was full of them, to the farthest limits of its darkest paths.  There were clusters of them all along the lawns, on the trees, in the shrubbery.  The fine gravel of the avenues, the waves of the river, seemed to emit green sparks, and all those microscopic flashes formed a sort of holiday illumination in which Savigny seemed to be enveloped in her honor, to celebrate the betrothal of Georges and Sidonie.