r. They had now reached a little clearing, whence several narrow
paths, fringed with green hedges, struck out in various directions,
twisting hither and thither, intersecting one another, bending and
stretching in the most capricious fashion. Albine and Serge rose on
tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but they were in no haste, and would
willingly have stayed where they were, lost in the mazy windings,
without ever getting anywhere, if they had not seen before them the
proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at last beneath their
shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when one enters some
vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of the mighty
trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered loftily, line
by line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves opened far away,
with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in their proportions,
whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly caned, so finely
chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the blue heavens. A
religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the ground below lay
hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of green was there,
nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and Albine listened
to their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by the majestic
solitude of this temple.

Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose
shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,
such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of
those mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness,
full of strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at
them one by one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their
majestic tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might
grow, expand into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples,
the ashes, the hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a
multitude full of proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the
fall of any one of them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of
the forest. The elms displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap,
scarce veiled by light clusters of little leaves. The birches and the
alders, delicate as sylphs, swayed their slim figures in the breeze to
which they surrendered the foliage that streamed around them like the
locks of goddesses already half metamorphosed into trees. The planes