rds yourself."

3

It was the silent hour when nature seems to be awaiting the darkness.
Not a breath, not a sound, while the colours of the day vanish one by
one before the life of the evening has yet begun to throb.

I turned to my companion. With a great labourer's knife in her hand, she
was solemnly whittling a piece of wood. She answered my enquiring
glance:

"It is to fasten to Blossom's horns; she's getting into bad ways...."

And, quickly, fearing lest she had hurt me, she added:

"I was listening, you know!"

4

Standing in the porch, we breathe the scent of the rose-trees laden with
roses. It has been raining heavily. Tiny drops drip from leaf to leaf;
the flowers, for a moment bowed down, raise their heads; the birds
resume their singing; and, in the sunbeams that now appear, slanting and
a little treacherous, the pebbles on the path glitter like precious
stones.

We had taken shelter, during the storm, inside the house, where we sat
eating sweets, laughing and talking without restraint. But now Rose is
uneasy; she looks at me and says, abruptly:

"Do you love me?"

"I cannot tell you yet."

She insists, coaxingly:

"Do tell me!"

"Darling, I have become very chary of words like that, for I know what
pain we can give if, after our lips have uttered them, they are not
borne out by all our later acts. As we grow in understanding, I believe
that it becomes more difficult for us to distinguish the exact value of
the friendship which we bestow."

"Why?"

"For the very reason that we grow at the same time less capable of
hatred, contempt and indifference. If a fellow-creature is natural, he
interests us by the sole fact of the life which he represents; and, if
circumstances make us meet him often, it will be hard for us to be
certain whether what we are actually lavishing upon him is friendship
or only interest."

She seemed to like listening to me; and I continued in the same strain:

"A moment, therefore, comes when our understanding is like a second
heart, a heart that seems to anticipate and complete the other, by
giving perfect security to its movements...."

A breath of wind passed and stripped the petals from a rose that hung in
the doorway. And our shoulders were covered with little scented wings.

CHAPTER IX

1

Beside the house, two old cypresses make great pools of shadow in the
bright, green garden. Motionless, they keep a pious and jealous watch
over the ston