.. Darling, darling, I am here, I hold your hand, don't let me
go!... Now it is not quite yet the hour, spring hardly shows the end of
his icy nose...."

"Like yours," said Luce.

"Very soon we shall awake on a fine summer's day...."

"We ourselves shall be that fine day of summer," says Luce.

"The warm shade of the limetrees, the sun through the branches, the bees
that sing...."

"The peach on the warm wall and its perfumed pulp...."

"The noon spell of the harvesters and their golden sheaves...."

"The lazy cattle that chew their cud...."

"And at evensong, by the sunset like a flowerset pool, the liquid light
that runs across the tops of the fields...."

"Yes, we shall be everything," quoth Luce, "everything that is good and
sweet to see and to have, to kiss and to eat, to touch and inhale....
What's left over we shall leave to them," she added, pointing to the
city and its smoke wreaths.

She laughed. Then, kissing her friend, she said:

"We have chanted our little duet well. What do you say, my friend
Pierrot?"

"Yea, verily, Jessica," he replied.

"My poor Pierrot," she returned, "we are none too well equipped for this
world, where people know how to sing nothing else but the
_Marseillaise_!..."

"Good enough if they even knew how to sing that!"

"We have got off at the wrong station, we left the train too early."

"I'm afraid," said Pierre, "that the next station would have been still
worse. Can you see us, my darling, in the social fabric of the
future--the hive they promise us, where none will have the right to live
except for the queen bee's service or for the republic?"

"Laying eggs from morning to night like a _mitrailleuse_ or from morning
to night licking the eggs of others.... Thank you for that choice!" said
Luce.

"Oh, Luce, little ugly one, how ugly you talk," said Pierre laughing.

"Yes, it's very bad, I know it. I am good for nothing. Nor you either,
my friend. You are just as ill fitted for killing or maiming men as I am
for sewing them up again, like those wretched horses when they are
ripped up at the bullfights, so that they can serve again at the next
affray. We two are useless beings and dangerous, who have the
ridiculous, criminal pretention to live only in order to love those we
do love, likewise my little lover lad and my friends, honest people and
little children, the good light of the day, also good white bread and
everything that is pretty and right for me to put