led here and there a fire of
gleaming sparks; convolvuli opened their heart-shaped leaves, and with
thousands of little bells rang a silent peal of exquisite colours;
sweetpeas, like swarms of settling butterflies, folded tawny or rosy
wings, ready to be borne yet farther away by the first breeze. It
was all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled with a shower of flowers,
straying away in wild dishevelment, and suggesting the head of some
giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion, with a streaming of
magnificent hair, which spread into a pool of perfume.

'I have never dared to venture into all that darkness,' Albine whispered
to Serge.

He urged her on, carried her over the nettles; and as a great boulder
barred the way into the grotto, he held her up for a moment in his arms
so that she might be able to peer through the opening that yawned at a
few feet from the ground.

'A marble woman,' she whispered, 'has fallen full length into the
stream. The water has eaten her face away.'

Then he, too, in his turn wanted to look, and pulled himself up. A cold
breeze played upon his cheeks. In the pale light that glided through the
hole, he saw the marble woman lying amidst the reeds and the duckweed.
She was naked to the waist. She must have been drowning there for the
last hundred years. Some grief had probably flung her into that spring
where she was slowly committing suicide. The clear water which flowed
over her had worn her face into a smooth expanse of marble, a mere white
surface without a feature; but her breasts, raised out of the water by
what appeared an effort of her neck, were still perfect and lifelike,
throbbing even yet with the joys of some old delight.

'She isn't dead yet,' said Serge, getting down again. 'One day we will
come and get her out of there.'

But Albine shuddered and led him away. They passed out again into the
sunlight and the rank luxuriance of beds and borders. They wandered
through a field of flowers capriciously, at random. Their feet trod a
carpet of lovely dwarf plants, which had once neatly fringed the walks,
and now spread about in wild profusion. In succession they passed
ankle-deep through the spotted silk of soft rose catchflies, through the
tufted satin of feathered pinks, and the blue velvet of forget-me-nots,
studded with melancholy little eyes. Further on they forced their way
through giant mignonette, which rose to their knees like a bath of
perfume; then they turned through