love-kisses of its rulers.

But Albine's joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly
pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.

'What is the matter?' asked Serge.

'Nothing,' she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.

They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were.
To lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse
them as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By
degrees they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a
labyrinth of bushes.

'Don't you hear?' asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped
short, almost breathless.

Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could
no longer conceal.

'All the coppice seems full of voices,' she continued. 'It sounds as
though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn't that a laugh
that sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur
something as my dress brushed against it?'

'No, no,' he said, anxious to reassure her, 'the garden loves us; and,
if it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don't you
remember all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are
nervous and fancy things.'

But she shook her head and faltered: 'I know very well that the garden
is our friend.... So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am
certain I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and
hide me somewhere, I beseech you.'

Then they went on again, scanning every tree and bush, and imagining
that they could see faces peering at them from behind every trunk.
Albine was certain, she said, that there were steps pursuing them in the
distance. 'Let us hide ourselves,' she begged.

She had turned quite scarlet. It was new-born modesty, a sense of
shame which had laid hold of her like a fever, mantling over the snowy
whiteness of her skin, which never previously had known that flush.
Serge was alarmed at seeing her thus crimson, her face full of distress,
her eyes brimming with tears. He tried to clasp her in his arms again
and to soothe her with a caress; but she slipped away from him, and,
with a despairing gesture, made sign that they were not alone. And her
blushes grew deeper as her eyes fell upon her bare arms. She shuddered
when her loose hanging hair stirred against her neck and shoulders.
The slightest touch of a waving bough or a passing insect, the softest
breath of air, now ma