r keep
herself from dozing off.

Serge, recognising that she was unwilling to reply, had ceased to
question her; and, when she now entered his room, he contented himself
with casting an anxious glance at her, fearful lest some evening she
should no longer have strength enough to come to him. Where could she
thus reduce herself to such exhaustion? What perpetual struggle was it
that brought about those alternations of joy and despair? One morning
he started at the sound of a light footfall beneath his window. It
could not be a roe venturing abroad in that manner. Moreover he could
recognise that light footfall. Albine was wandering about the Paradou
without him. It was from the Paradou that she returned to him with all
those hopes and fears and inward wrestlings, all that lassitude which
was killing her. And he could well guess what she was seeking out there,
alone in the woody depths, with all the silent obstinacy of a woman who
has vowed to effect her purpose. After that he used to listen for her
steps. He dared not draw aside the curtain and watch her as she hurried
along through the trees; but he experienced strange, almost painful
emotion, in listening to ascertain what direction she took, whether she
turned to right or to left, whether she went straight on through the
flower-beds, and how far her ramble extended. Amidst all the noisy life
of the Paradou, amidst the soughing chorus of the trees, the rustling of
the streams, and the ceaseless songs of the birds, he could distinguish
the gentle pit-pat of her shoes so plainly that he could have told
whether she was stepping over the gravel near the rivers, the crumbling
mould of the forest, or the bare ledges of the rocks. In time he even
learned to tell, from the sound of her nervous footfall, whether she
came back hopeful or depressed. As soon as he heard her step on the
staircase, he hurried from the window, and he never let her know that
he had thus followed her from afar in her wanderings. But she must have
guessed it, for with a glance she always afterwards told him where she
had been.

'Stay indoors, and don't go out,' he begged her, with clasped hands,
one morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the
previous day. 'You drive me to despair.'

But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with
Albine's footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever
upon Serge. The pit-pat of her feet was yet another vo