her lips as they traversed the deeper shadows, as if
the sight of Annette had revived the impatience of his heart.

At last they reached the edge of the plain, where they could just
discern, afar, here and there, the groups of trees belonging to the
farms. Through the milky mist that bathed the fields the horizon
appeared illimitable, and the soft silence, the living silence of that
vast space, so warm and luminous, was full of inexpressible hope, of
that indefinable expectancy which makes summer nights so sweet. Far
up in the heavens a few long slender clouds looked like silver shells.
Standing still for a few seconds, one could hear in that nocturnal peace
a confused, continuous murmur of life, a thousand slight sounds, the
harmony of which seemed like silence.

A quail in a neighboring field uttered her double cry, and Julio, his
ears erect, glided furtively toward the two flute-like notes of the
bird, Annette following, as softly as he, holding her breath and
crouching low.

"Ah," said the Countess, standing alone with the painter, "why do
moments like this pass so quickly? We can hold nothing, keep nothing. We
have not even time to taste what is good. It is over already."

Olivier kissed her hand, and replied, smiling:

"Oh, I cannot philosophize this evening! I belong to the present hour
entirely."

"You do not love me as I love you," she murmured.

"Ah, do not--"

"No," she interrupted, "in me you love, as you said very truly before
dinner, a woman who satisfies the needs of your heart, a woman who never
has caused you a pain, and who has put a little happiness into your
life. I know that; I feel it. Yes, I have the good consciousness, the
ardent joy of having been good, useful, and helpful to you. You have
loved, you still love all that you find agreeable in me, my attentions
to you, my admiration, my wish to please you, my passion, the complete
gift I made to you of my whole being. But it is not I you really love,
do you know? Oh, I feel that as one feels a cold current of air. You
love a thousand things about me--my beauty, which is fast leaving me, my
devotion, the wit they say I possess, the opinion the world has of me,
and that which I have of you in my heart; but it is not _I_--I, nothing
but myself--do you understand?"

He laughed in a soft and friendly way.

"No, I do not understand you very well. You make a reproachful attack
which is quite unexpected."

"Oh, my God! I wish I could make yo