eard the song of a bird, which
seemed a long way off.

"Listen!" he said; "the nightingales are singing during the day, so the
female birds must be sitting."

A nightingale! She had never heard one before, and the idea of listening
to one roused visions of poetic tenderness in her heart. A nightingale!
That is to say, the invisible witness of her love trysts which Juliet
invoked on her balcony; that celestial music which it attuned to human
kisses, that eternal inspirer of all those languorous romances which
open an ideal sky to all the poor little tender hearts of sensitive
girls!

She was going to hear a nightingale.

"We must not make a noise," her companion said, "and then we can go into
the wood, and sit down close beside it."

The boat seemed to glide. They saw the trees on the island, the banks of
which were so low that they could look into the depths of the thickets.
They stopped, he made the boat fast, Henriette took hold of Henri's arm,
and they went beneath the trees.

"Stoop," he said, so she stooped down, and they went into an
inextricable thicket of creepers, leaves and reed grass, which formed an
undiscoverable retreat, and which the young man laughingly called "his
private room."

Just above their heads, perched in one of the trees which hid them, the
bird was still singing. He uttered trills and roulades, and then loud,
vibrating notes that filled the air and seemed to lose themselves on the
horizon, across the level country, through that burning silence which
weighed upon the whole landscape. They did not speak for fear of
frightening it away. They were sitting close together, and, slowly,
Henri's arm stole round the girl's waist and squeezed it gently. She
took that daring hand without any anger, and kept removing it whenever
he put it round her; without, however, feeling at all embarrassed by
this caress, just as if it had been something quite natural, which she
was resisting just as naturally.

She was listening to the bird in ecstasy. She felt an infinite longing
for happiness, for some sudden demonstration of tenderness, for the
revelation of superhuman poetry, and she felt such a softening at her
heart, and relaxation of her nerves, that she began to cry, without
knowing why. The young man was now straining her close to him, yet
she did not remove his arm; she did not think of it. Suddenly the
nightingale stopped, and a voice called out in the distance:

"Henriette!"

"Do not reply,