He stopped.

“If we are beaten?” repeated Miette, softly.

“Then be it as God wills!” continued Silvere, in a softer voice.  “I most likely shall not be there.  You will comfort the poor woman.  That would be better.”

“Ah! as you said just now,” the young girl murmured, “it would be better to die.”

At this longing for death they tightened their embrace.  Miette relied upon dying with Silvere; he had only spoken of himself, but she felt that he would gladly take her with him into the earth.  They would there be able to love each other more freely than under the sun.  Aunt Dide would die likewise and join them.  It was, so to say, a rapid presentiment, a desire for some strange voluptuousness, to which Heaven, by the mournful accents of the tocsin, was promising early gratification.  To die!  To die!  The bells repeated these words with increasing passion, and the lovers yielded to the calls of the darkness; they fancied they experienced a foretaste of the last sleep, in the drowsiness into which they again sank, whilst their lips met once more.

Miette no longer turned away.  It was she, now, who pressed her lips to Silvere’s, who sought with mute ardour for the delight whose stinging smart she had not at first been able to endure.  The thought of approaching death had excited her; she no longer felt herself blushing, but hung upon her love, while he in faltering voice repeated:  “I love you!  I love you!”

But at this Miette shook her head, as if to say it was not true.  With her free and ardent nature she had a secret instinct of the meaning and purposes of life, and though she was right willing to die she would fain have known life first.  At last, growing calmer, she gently rested her head on the young man’s shoulder, without uttering a word.  Silvere kissed her again.  She tasted those kisses slowly, seeking their meaning, their hidden sweetness.  As she felt them course through her veins, she interrogated them, asking if they were all love, all passion.  But languor at last overcame her, and she fell into gentle slumber.  Silvere had enveloped her in her pelisse, drawing the skirt around himself at the same time.  They no longer felt cold.  The young man rejoiced to find, from the regularity of her breathing, that the girl was now asleep; this repose would enable them to proceed on their way with spirit.  He resolved to let her slumber for an hour.  The sky was still black, and the approach of day was but faintly indicated by a whitish line in the east.  Behind the lovers there must have been a pine wood whose musical awakening it was that the young man heard amidst the morning breezes.  And meantime the wailing of the bells grew more sonorous in the quivering atmosphere, lulling Miette’s slumber even as it had accompanied her passionate fever.

Until that troublous night, these young people had lived through one of those innocent idylls that blossom among the toiling masses, those outcasts and folks of simple mind amidst whom one may yet occasionally find amours as primitive as those of the ancient Greek romances.