matics, sour fruits, and milky shoots. Further, he could smell
it coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way--the scent of
earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the
scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to
bring on dizziness. He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid
flight of a bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from
silence, giving voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the
music of things and beings. Finally, he could see it coming from the end
of the path, from the meadows steeped in gold--yes, he could see that
rosy air, so bright that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming
smile, no bigger in the distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few
swift bounds transformed into the very splendour of the sun. And the
morn flowed up and beat against the mulberry tree against which Serge
was leaning. And he himself resuscitated amidst the childhood of the
morn.

'Serge! Serge!' cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of
the flower garden. 'Don't be afraid, I am here.'

But Serge no longer felt frightened. He was being born anew in the
sunshine, in that pure bath of light which streamed upon him. He was
being born anew at five-and-twenty, his senses hurriedly unclosing,
enraptured with the mighty sky, the joyful earth, the prodigy of
loveliness spread out around him. This garden, which he knew not only
the day before, now afforded him boundless delight. Everything filled
him with ecstasy, even the blades of grass, the pebbles in the paths,
the invisible puffs of air that flitted over his cheeks. His whole body
entered into possession of this stretch of nature; he embraced it
with his limbs, he drank it in with his lips, he inhaled it with his
nostrils, he carried it in his ears and hid it in the depths of his
eyes. It was his own. The roses of the flower garden, the lofty boughs
of the forest, the resounding rocks of the waterfall, the meadows which
the sun planted with blades of light, were his. Then he closed his eyes
and slowly reopened them that he might enjoy the dazzle of a second
wakening.

'The birds have eaten all the strawberries,' said Albine disconsolately,
as she ran up to him. 'See, I have only been able to find these two!'

But she stopped short a few steps away, heart-struck and gazing at Serge
with rapturous astonishment. 'How handsome you are!' she cried.

She drew a little nearer; th