Rose and Jeanne the stockings they
were coveting. She did not open her lips; she only gave one long, fixed,
hard look.

But now Angelique realised that her feet were bare, and that Felicien
saw them. She blushed deeply, and knew not what to do. She dared not
move, for, were she to rise to get up, he would only see them all the
more. Then, frightened, she rose quickly, and without realising what she
was doing, began to run. In the grass her flying feet were very white
and small. The darkness of the evening had increased, and the Clos-Marie
was a lake of shadow between the great trees on one side and the
Cathedral on the other. And on the ground the only visible light came
from those same little feet, white and satiny as the wing of a dove.

Startled and afraid of the water, Angelique followed the bank of the
Chevrotte, that she might cross it on a plank which served as a bridge.
But Felicien had gone a shorter way through the brambles and brushwood.
Until now he had always been overcome by his timidity, and he had turned
redder than she as he saw her bare feet, pure and chaste as herself.
Now, in the overflow of his ignorant youth, passionately fond of beauty
and desirous for love, he was impatient to cry out and tell her of the
feeling which had entirely taken possession of him since he had first
seen her. But yet, when she brushed by him in her flight, he could only
stammer, with a trembling voice, the acknowledgment so long delayed and
which burnt his lips:

"I love you."

She stopped in surprise. For an instant she stood still, and, slightly
trembling, looked at him. Her anger and the hate she thought she had for
him all vanished at once, and melted into a most delicious sentiment
of astonishment. What had he said, what was the word he had just
pronounced, that she should be so overcome by it? She knew that he loved
her; yet when he said so, the sound of it in her ear overwhelmed her
with an inexplicable joy. It resounded so deeply through her whole
being, that her fears came back and were enlarged. She never would dare
reply to him; it was really more than she could bear; she was oppressed.

He, grown more bold, his heart touched and drawn nearer to hers by their
united deeds of charity, repeated:

"I love you."

And she, fearing the lover, began to run. That was surely the only way
to escape such a danger; yet it was also a happiness, it was all so
strange. The Chevrotte was gaily singing, and she plunged i