with lips compressed, saying nothing,
but feeling a strong inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower.
Nothing else occurred to him. Then, to make his peace with her, he
asked: 'Would you like me to carry you as I did the other day?'

'No, no.'

She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she
turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.

'I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won't
let me go. Come and unfasten me.'

When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.
Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this
fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.
Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here
and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and
downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into
lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath
the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like
pure gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing
dust tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle
breezes swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on
the caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of
little white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups,
like holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark
grass. Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which
the touch of a fly's wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely
poppies raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away,
spread out like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced
aloft their light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away
at every breath of air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly
feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog's-tail,
creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine
filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished
forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin
broidered with purple flowers. And all these were seen, to right, to
left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the level soil, showing like
the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep beneath the sky which ever
seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast expanse, the