thy appetite of her
youth; when they two had eaten and drank so gaily, rejoicing in their
existence. And the garden, too, the whole place was bound up with the
most intimate fibers of her being, for she could not take a step in it
that their united images did not appear before her--on the terrace; in
the slender shadow of the great secular cypresses, where they had so
often contemplated the valley of the Viorne, closed in by the ridges of
the Seille and the parched hills of Sainte-Marthe; the stone steps among
the puny olive and almond trees, which they had so often challenged
each other to run up in a trial of speed, like boys just let loose from
school; and there was the pine grove, too, the warm, embalsamed shade,
where the needles crackled under their feet; the vast threshing yard,
carpeted with soft grass, where they could see the whole sky at night,
when the stars were coming out; and above all there were the giant plane
trees, whose delightful shade they had enjoyed every day in summer,
listening to the soothing song of the fountain, the crystal clear song
which it had sung for centuries. Even to the old stones of the house,
even to the earth of the grounds, there was not an atom at La Souleiade
in which she did not feel a little of their blood warmly throbbing, with
which she did not feel a little of their life diffused and mingled.

But she preferred to spend her days in the workroom, and here it was
that she lived over again her best hours. There was nothing new in it
but the cradle. The doctor's table was in its place before the window to
the left--she could fancy him coming in and sitting down at it, for his
chair had not even been moved. On the long table in the center, among
the old heap of books and papers, there was nothing new but the cheerful
note of the little baby linen, which she was looking over. The bookcases
displayed the same rows of volumes; the large oaken press seemed to
guard within its sides the same treasure, securely shut in. Under the
smoky ceiling the room was still redolent of work, with its confusion of
chairs, the pleasant disorder of this common workroom, filled with the
caprices of the girl and the researches of the scientist. But what most
moved her to-day was the sight of her old pastels hanging against the
wall, the copies which she had made of living flowers, scrupulously
exact copies, and of dream flowers of an imaginary world, whither her
wild fancy sometimes carried her.

C