ve; and who will give me joy if you do not?"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PRIMROSE PATH

After her return to Paris, for six weeks Therese lived in the ardent half
sleep of happiness, and prolonged delightfully her thoughtless dream. She
went to see Jacques every day in the little house shaded by a tree; and
when they had at last parted at night, she took away with her adored
reminiscences. They had the same tastes; they yielded to the same
fantasies. The same capricious thoughts carried them away. They found
pleasure in running to the suburbs that border the city, the streets
where the wine-shops are shaded by acacia, the stony roads where the
grass grows at the foot of walls, the little woods and the fields over
which extended the blue sky striped by the smoke of manufactories. She
was happy to feel him near her in this region where she did not know
herself, and where she gave to herself the illusion of being lost with
him.

One day they had taken the boat that she had seen pass so often under her
windows. She was not afraid of being recognized. Her danger was not
great, and, since she was in love, she had lost prudence. They saw shores
which little by little grew gay, escaping the dusty aridity of the
suburbs; they went by islands with bouquets of trees shading taverns, and
innumerable boats tied under willows. They debarked at Bas-Meudon. As she
said she was warm and thirsty, he made her enter a wine-shop. It was a
building with wooden galleries, which solitude made to appear larger, and
which slept in rustic peace, waiting for Sunday to fill it with the
laughter of girls, the cries of boatmen, the odor of fried fish, and the
smoke of stews.

They went up the creaking stairway, shaped like a ladder, and in a
first-story room a maid servant brought wine and biscuits to them. On the
mantelpiece, at one of the corners of the room, was an oval mirror in a
flower-covered frame. Through the open window one saw the Seine, its
green shores, and the hills in the distance bathed with warm air. The
trembling peace of a summer evening filled the sky, the earth, and the
water.

Therese looked at the running river. The boat passed on the water, and
when the wake which it left reached the shore it seemed as if the house
rocked like a vessel.

"I like the water," said Therese. "How happy I am!"

Their lips met.

Lost in the enchanted despair of love, time was not marked for them
except by the cool plash of the water, which