in silence, full of emotion, but as yet not daring to confess that they loved one another.  It was in that clearing that they had lingered one evening till very late watching the stars, which had rained upon them like golden drops of warmth.  Farther, beneath that oak they had exchanged their first kiss.  Its fragrance still clung to the tree, and the very moss still remembered it.  It was false to say that the forest had become voiceless and bare.

Serge, however, turned away his head, that he might escape the gaze of Albine’s eyes, which oppressed him.

Then she led him to the great rocks.  There, perhaps, he would no longer shudder with that appearance of debility which so distressed her.  At that hour the rocks were still warm with the red glow of the setting sun.  They still wore an aspect of tragic passion, with their hot ledges of stone whereon the fleshy plants writhed monstrously.  Without speaking a word, without even turning her head, Albine led Serge up the rough ascent, wishing to take him ever higher and higher, far up beyond the springs, till they should emerge into the full light on the summit.  They would there see the cedar, beneath whose shade they had first felt the thrill of desire, and there amidst the glowing stones they would assuredly find passion once more.  But Serge soon began to stumble pitiably.  He could walk no further.  He fell a first time on his knees.  Albine, by a mighty effort, raised him and for a moment carried him along, but afterwards he fell again, and remained, quite overcome, on the ground.  In front of him, beneath him, spread the vast Paradou.

‘You have lied!’ cried Albine.  ‘You love me no longer!’

She burst into tears as she stood there by his side, feeling that she could not carry him any higher.  There was no sign of anger in her now.  She was simply weeping over their dying love.  Serge lay dazed and stupefied.

‘The garden is all dead.  I feel so very cold,’ he murmured.  But she took his head between her hands, and showed him the Paradou.

’Look at it!  Ah! it is your eyes that are dead; your ears and your limbs and your whole body.  You have passed by all the scenes of our happiness without seeing them or hearing them or feeling their presence.  You have done nothing but slip and stumble, and now you have fallen down here in sheer weariness and boredom. . . .  You love me no more.’

He protested, but in a gentle, quiet fashion.  Then, for the first time, she spoke out passionately.

’Be quiet!  As if the garden could ever die!  It will sleep for the winter, but it will wake up again in May, and will restore to us all the love we have entrusted to its keeping.  Our kisses will blossom again amongst the flower-beds, and our vows will bud again with the trees and plants.  If you could only see it and understand it, you would know that it throbs with even deeper passion, and loves even more absorbingly at this autumn-time, when it falls asleep in its fruitfulness. . . .  But you love me no more, and so you can no longer understand.’