made the tour of the
estate, so that she had returned by the back of the house, through the
clump of enormous plane trees that on this side cast a thick shade. This
was the side on which opened the two windows of the doctor's room. And
she raised her eyes to them, for she had approached only in the sudden
hope of at last seeing him. But the windows remained closed, and she
was wounded by this as by an unkindness to herself. Then only did
she perceive that she still held in her hand her roll, which she had
forgotten to eat; and she plunged among the trees, biting it impatiently
with her fine young teeth.

It was a delicious retreat, this old quincunx of plane trees, another
remnant of the past splendor of La Souleiade. Under these giant trees,
with their monstrous trunks, there was only a dim light, a greenish
light, exquisitely cool, even on the hottest days of summer. Formerly
a French garden had been laid out here, of which only the box borders
remained; bushes which had habituated themselves to the shade, no doubt,
for they grew vigorously, as tall as trees. And the charm of this
shady nook was a fountain, a simple leaden pipe fixed in the shaft of
a column; whence flowed perpetually, even in the greatest drought, a
thread of water as thick as the little finger, which supplied a large
mossy basin, the greenish stones of which were cleaned only once in
three or four years. When all the wells of the neighborhood were dry,
La Souleiade still kept its spring, of which the great plane trees were
assuredly the secular children. Night and day for centuries past this
slender thread of water, unvarying and continuous, had sung the same
pure song with crystal sound.

Clotilde, after wandering awhile among the bushes of box, which reached
to her shoulder, went back to the house for a piece of embroidery, and
returning with it, sat down at a stone table beside the fountain. Some
garden chairs had been placed around it, and they often took coffee
here. And after this she affected not to look up again from her work,
as if she was completely absorbed in it. Now and then, while seeming to
look between the trunks of trees toward the sultry distance, toward the
yard, on which the sun blazed fiercely and which glowed like a brazier,
she stole a glance from under her long lashes up to the doctor's
windows. Nothing appeared, not a shadow. And a feeling of sadness, of
resentment, arose within her at this neglect, this contempt in which