passion which
had once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at
learning a lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other's lips, but
sought each other's cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other,
with shrieks of laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the
pleasure they experienced from their mutual love.

IX

The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand
expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet
gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back
before nightfall.

'Where are you going to take me?' asked Serge.

'You will see, you will see.'

But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the
face. 'You must not be foolish, you know. I won't have you hunting for
that glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one
droops and dies. You know that it is forbidden.'

She blushed slightly, protesting that she had no such idea in her head.
Then she added: 'But if we should come across them, just by chance, you
know, and without really seeking them, you wouldn't mind sitting down,
would you? Else you must love me very little.'

They set off, going straight through the parterre without stopping to
watch the awakening of the flowers which were all dripping after their
dewy bath. The morning had a rosy hue, the smile of a beautiful child,
just opening its eyes on its snowy pillow.

'Where are you taking me?' repeated Serge.

But Albine only laughed and would not answer. Then, on reaching the
stream which ran through the garden at the end of the flower-beds, she
halted in great distress. The water was swollen with the late rains.

'We shall never be able to get across,' she murmured. 'I can generally
manage it by taking off my shoes and stockings, but, to-day, the water
would reach to our waists.'

They walked for a moment or two along the bank to find some fordable
point; but the girl said it was hopeless; she knew the stream quite
well. Once there had been a bridge across, but it had fallen in, and had
strewn the river bed with great blocks of stone, between which the water
rushed along in foaming eddies.

'Get on to my back, then,' said Serge.

'No, no; I'd rather not. If you were to slip, we should both of us get a
famous wetting. You don't know how treacherous those stones are.'

'Get on to my back,' repeated Serge.

She was tempted to do so. She stepped back fo