plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they
were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter,
penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian,
clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores,
dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they
reeled and tottered one against the other.

'Shall I hold you up?' Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning
heavily upon him.

He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his
grasp, and drew a long breath.

'No; you stifle me,' she said. 'Leave me alone. I don't know what is the
matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there
I feel the pain.'

She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned
quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in
their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think
of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to
die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?

'Come and sit down in the shade,' said Serge. 'It is these plants which
are poisoning us with their noxious odours.'

He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and
trembled when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar,
whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that
she seated herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with
soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and
solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of
sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver;
evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery
verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red. There was a
weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular
arms resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with
imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent. In
this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness. The
atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume
that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the
odorous trees.

'Are you not going to sit down?' said Albine.

And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped
back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, h