vegetation
was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the colour of the heavens.

Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass
reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and
then, indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a
stream of bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then
there were placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass,
which scarcely reached their ankles. As they walked along together,
their joy found expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week
before, but rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple
arms of the herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream
which calmed the exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and
slipped into a lofty patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only
her head appeared. For a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then
she called to Serge: 'Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one
had green water all over one.'

Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and
they both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their
onward course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild
cress. It flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected
like a mirror the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge
followed this stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for
a long time before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow
upon the idle waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare
brook stretch out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half
uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their
roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks,
rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of
youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible
upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below,
was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface,
as though it were surprised to find even this light veil cast over it.
Between the three willows the meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and
some crimson poppies had sprung up in the crevices of the decaying old
trunks. The foliage of the willows looked like a tent of greenery fixed
upon three stakes by the water's edge, beside a rolling prairie.

'This is the pl