“Tell me,” said he, “what flower you prefer, and I will have a brooch made of it for you.”

She hesitated, surprised.

“What, a brooch?”

“In stones of the same color; in rubies if it is the poppy; in sapphires if it is the cornflower, with a little leaf in emeralds.”

Annette’s face lighted up with that affectionate joy with which promises and presents animate a woman’s countenance.

“The cornflower,” said she, “it is so pretty.”

“The cornflower it shall be.  We will go to order it as soon as we return to Paris.”

She no longer tried to leave him, attracted by the thought of the jewel she already tried to see, to imagine.

“Does it take very long to make a thing like that?” she asked.

He laughed, feeling that he had caught her.

“I don’t know; it depends upon the difficulties.  We will make the jeweler do it quickly.”

A dismal thought suddenly crossed her mind.

“But I cannot wear it since I am in deep mourning!”

He had passed his arm under that of the young girl, and pressed it against him.

“Well, you will keep the brooch until you cease to wear mourning,” said he; “that will not prevent you from looking at it.”

As on the preceding evening, he was walking between them, held captive between their shoulders, and in order to see their eyes, of a similar blue dotted with tiny black spots, raised to his, he spoke to them in turn, moving his head first toward the one, then toward the other.  As the bright sunlight now shone on them, he did not so fully confound the Countess with Annette, but he did more and more associate the daughter with the new-born remembrances of what the mother had been.  He had a strong desire to embrace both, the one to find again upon cheek and neck a little of that pink and white freshness which he had already tasted, and which he saw now reproduced as by a miracle; the other because he loved her as he always had, and felt that from her came the powerful appeal of long habit.  He even realized at that moment that his desire and affection for her, which for some time had been waning, had revived at the sight of her resuscitated youth.

Annette went away again to gather more flowers.  This time Olivier did not call her back; it was as if the contact of her arm and the satisfaction of knowing that he had given her pleasure had quieted him; but he followed all her movements with the pleasure one feels in seeing the persons or things that captivate and intoxicate our eyes.  When she returned, with a large cluster of flowers, he drew a deep breath, seeking unconsciously to inhale something of her, a little of her breath or the warmth of her skin in the air stirred by her running.  He looked at her, enraptured, as one watches the dawn, or listens to music, with thrills of delight when she bent, rose again, or raised her arms to arrange her hair.  And then, more and more, hour by hour, she evoked in