e was something
benevolent and invisible, something like the good God of the past,
behind those walls. She hummed an air she had heard there, and said
that music was easier to remember than people. They dropped back into
the past easily and naturally. They wrapped themselves up in their
memories as though they were cold.

"The other day, just before we left, I took a candle and walked alone
through the rooms, which scarcely woke up to watch me pass."

In the garden, so prim and well kept, they thought only of the flowers,
and little else. They saw the pool, the shady walk, and the cherry
tree, which, in winter when the lawn was white, they made believe had
too many blossoms--snow blossoms.

The day before they had still been in the garden, like brother and
sister. Now life seemed to have grown serious all at once, and they no
longer knew how to play. I saw that they wanted to kill the past.
When we are old, we let it die; when we are young and strong, we kill
it.

She sat up straight.

"I don't want to remember any more," she said.

And he:

"I don't want us to be like each other any more. I don't want us to be
brother and sister any more."

Gradually their eyes opened.

"To touch nothing but each other's hands," he muttered, trembling.

"Brother--sister--that's nothing."

It had come--the hour of beautiful, troubled decisions, of forbidden
fruits. They had not belonged to each other before. The hour had come
when they sought to be all in all to each other.

They were a little self-conscious, a little ashamed of themselves
already. A few days before, in the evening, it had given them profound
pleasure to disobey their parents and go out of the garden although
they had been forbidden to leave it.

"Grandmother came to the top of the steps and called to us to come in."

"But we were gone. We had slipped through the hole in the hedge where
a bird always sang. There was no wind, and scarcely any light. Even
the trees didn't stir. The dust on the ground was dead. The shadows
stole round us so softly that we almost spoke to them. We were
frightened to see night coming on. Everything had lost its colour.
But the night was clear, and the flowers, the road, even the wheat were
silver. And it was then that my mouth came closest to your mouth."

"The night," she said, her soul carried aloft on a wave of beauty, "the
night caresses the caresses."

"I took your hand, and I knew that you would l