Then she asked him: 

‘Do you still love me?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I love you still.’

They stood looking at each other, feeling rather ill at ease.  And deep silence fell between them.  Serge, who evinced perfect calmness, did not attempt to break it.  Albine twice opened her mouth to speak, but closed it immediately, surprised at the words that rose to her lips.  She could summon up nothing but expressions tinged with bitterness.  She felt tears welling into her eyes.  What could be the matter with her that she did not feel happy now that her love had come back?

‘Listen to me,’ she said at last.  ’We must not stay here.  It is that hole that freezes us!  Let us go back to our old home.  Give me your hand.’

They plunged into the depths of the Paradou.  Autumn was fast approaching, and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their yellowing crests from which the leaves were falling one by one.  The paths were already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture, which gave out a sound as of sighing beneath one’s tread.  And away beyond the lawns misty vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over the blue distance.  And the whole garden was wrapped in silence, broken only by some sorrowful moans that sounded quiveringly.

Serge began to shiver beneath the avenue of tall trees, along which they were walking.

‘How cold it is here!’ said he in an undertone.

‘You are cold indeed,’ murmured Albine, sadly.  ’My hand is no longer able to warm you.  Shall I wrap you round with part of my dress?  Come, all our love will now be born afresh.’

She led him to the parterre, the flower-garden.  The great thicket-like rosary was still fragrant with perfume, but there was a tinge of bitterness in the scent of the surviving blossoms, and their foliage, which had expanded in wild profusion, lay strewn upon the ground.  Serge displayed such unwillingness to enter the tangled jungle, that they lingered on its borders, trying to detect in the distance the paths along which they had passed in the spring-time.  Albine recollected every little nook.  She pointed to the grotto where the marble woman lay sleeping; to the hanging screens of honeysuckle and clematis; the fields of violets; the fountain that spurted out crimson carnations; the steps down which flowed golden gilliflowers; the ruined colonnade, in the midst of which the lilies were rearing a snowy pavilion.  It was there that they had been born again beneath the sunlight.  And she recapitulated every detail of that first day together, how they had walked, and how fragrant had been the air beneath the cool shade.  Serge seemed to be listening, but he suddenly asked a question which showed that he had not understood her.  The slight shiver which made his face turn pale never left him.