ay. But
with eyelids lowered and hands on ears, when the bolt is pushed on the
door, suddenly in one's inner deep there comes a silence, a blinding
silence, the moveless summer day, when Joy invisible like a hidden bird
sings its song, fresh and liquid, like a brook. O Joy! magical singer,
warblings of happiness! I know too well it suffices that a slit should
open between my lids or that my finger should cease to push a moment
against my ear, and the foam and roar of the stream will follow in.
Frail dyke! Just to know it so frail exalts the mood of Joy which I know
is threatened. Peace and silence itself take on a passionate look!...

The woods once reached, they held each other by the hand. The first days
of spring are a new wine that rises to the head. The youthful sun
intoxicates with the purest juice of its vine. Light still floats over
the leafless wood, and athwart the bare branches the blue eye of the sky
fascinates the reason and lulls it to sleep.... Scarcely did they
endeavor to exchange a few words. Their tongues declined to finish a
phrase once started. Their legs were weak and they hated to walk. Under
the sunshine and the silence of the woods they tottered. The earth drew
them. Just to lie down in the path! Just to let themselves be carried
along on the rim of the colossal wheel of the worlds....

They scrambled over the bank of the way-side, entered a thicket and,
side by side on the old dead leaves through which violets showed their
buds, they stretched themselves out. The first songs of the birds and
the distant thuds of the guns mingled with the village bells that were
proclaiming the festival of the morrow. The luminous air vibrated hope,
faith, love, death. Notwithstanding the solitude they spoke in whispers.
Their hearts were oppressed: by happiness? or by sorrow? They could not
have told. They were submerged in their dream. Lucile, immobile,
stretched out, her arms close to her body, her eyes open, absorbed and
gazing at the sky, felt rising in her a hidden suffering which since the
morning she forced herself to drive away in order not to mar the joy of
the holiday. Pierre laid his head on Luce's knees in the hollow of her
skirt like a child who goes to sleep with its face close couched against
the warmth of the stomach. And Luce without a word caressed with her
hands the ears and eyes, the nose and lips of her beloved one. Dear
spiritual hands which seemed, as in the tales about fairies, to have