She now remained quite silent in the water, and would not allow Silvere to touch her.  Gliding softly by his side, she swam on with the light rustling of a bird flying across the copse, or else she would circle round him, a prey to vague disquietude which she did not comprehend.  He himself darted quickly away if he happened to brush against her.  The river was now but a source of enervating intoxication, voluptuous languor, which disturbed them strangely.  When they emerged from their bath they felt dizzy, weary, and drowsy.  Fortunately, the girl declared one evening that she would bathe no more, as the cold water made the blood run to her head.  And it was in all truth and innocence that she said this.

Then their long conversations began anew.  The dangers to which the innocence of their love had lately been exposed had left no other trace in Silvere’s mind than great admiration for Miette’s physical strength.  She had learned to swim in a fortnight, and often, when they raced together, he had seen her stem the current with a stroke as rapid as his own.  He, who delighted in strength and bodily exercises, felt a thrill of pleasure at seeing her so strong, so active and adroit.  He entertained at heart a singular admiration for her stout arms.  One evening, after one of the first baths that had left them so playful, they caught each other round the waist on a strip of sand, and wrestled for several minutes without Silvere being able to throw Miette.  At last, indeed, it was the young man who lost his balance, while the girl remained standing.  Her sweetheart treated her like a boy, and it was those long rambles of theirs, those wild races across the meadows, those birds’ nests filched from the tree crests, those struggles and violent games of one and another kind that so long shielded them and their love from all impurity.

Then, too, apart from his youthful admiration for his sweetheart’s dashing pluck, Silvere felt for her all the compassionate tenderness of a heart that ever softened towards the unfortunate.  He, who could never see any forsaken creature, a poor man, or a child, walking barefooted along the dusty roads, without a throb of pity, loved Miette because nobody else loved her, because she virtually led an outcast’s hard life.  When he saw her smile he was deeply moved by the joy he brought her.  Moreover, the child was a wildling, like himself, and they were of the same mind in hating all the gossips of the Faubourg.  The dreams in which Silvere indulged in the daytime, while he plied his heavy hammer round the cartwheels in his master’s shop, were full of generous enthusiasm.  He fancied himself Miette’s redeemer.  All his reading rushed to his head; he meant to marry his sweetheart some day, in order to raise her in the eyes of the world.  It was like a holy mission that he imposed upon himself, that of redeeming and saving the convict’s daughter.  And his head was so full of certain theories and arguments,