II

Albine and Serge entered the flower garden. She was watching him
with tender anxiety, fearing lest he should overtire himself; but he
reassured her with a light laugh. He felt strong enough indeed to carry
her whithersoever she listed. When he found himself once more in the
full sunlight, he drew a sigh of content. At last he lived; he was no
longer a plant subject to the terrible sufferings of winter. And how he
was moved with loving gratitude! Had it been within his power, he would
have spared Albine's tiny feet even the roughness of the paths; he
dreamed of carrying her, clinging round his neck, like a child lulled
to sleep by her mother. He already watched over her with a guardian's
watchful care, thrusting aside the stones and brambles, jealous lest the
breeze should waft a fleeting kiss upon those darling locks which were
his alone. She on her side nestled against his shoulder and serenely
yielded to his guidance.

Thus Albine and Serge strolled on together in the sunlight for the first
time. A balmy fragrance floated in their wake, the very path on which
the sun had unrolled a golden carpet thrilled with delight under their
feet. Between the tall flowering shrubs they passed like a vision of
such wondrous charm that the distant paths seemed to entreat their
presence and hail them with a murmur of admiration, even as crowds hail
long-expected sovereigns. They formed one sole, supremely lovely being.
Albine's snowy skin was but the whiteness of Serge's browner skin.
And slowly they passed along clothed with sunlight--nay, they were
themselves the sun--worshipped by the low bending flowers.

A tide of emotion now stirred the Paradou to its depths. The old flower
garden escorted them--that vast field bearing a century's untrammelled
growth, that nook of Paradise sown by the breeze with the choicest
flowers. The blissful peace of the Paradou, slumbering in the broad
sunlight, prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a
temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched
to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was
mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths
decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot
of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the
depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint
aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty