safe; the weather was so warm, it would be so nice
to have the water up to their necks; besides which, she had been dying
to learn to swim for such a long time, and Silvere would be able to
teach her. Silvere raised objections; it was not prudent at night time;
they might be seen; perhaps, too they might catch cold. However, nothing
could turn Miette from her purpose. One evening she came with a bathing
costume which she had made out of an old dress; and Silvere was then
obliged to go back to aunt Dide's for his bathing drawers. Their
proceedings were characterised by great simplicity. Miette disrobed
herself beneath the shade of a stout willow; and when both were ready,
enveloped in the blackness which fell from the foliage around them, they
gaily entered the cool water, oblivious of all previous scruples, and
knowing in their innocence no sense of shame. They remained in the river
quite an hour, splashing and throwing water into each other's faces;
Miette now getting cross, now breaking out into laughter, while Silvere
gave her her first lesson, dipping her head under every now and again so
as to accustom her to the water. As long as he held her up she threw her
arms and legs about violently, thinking she was swimming; but directly
he let her go, she cried and struggled, striking the water with her
outstretched hands, clutching at anything she could get hold of, the
young man's waist or one of his wrists. She leant against him for an
instant, resting, out of breath and dripping with water; and then she
cried: "Once more; but you do it on purpose, you don't hold me."

At the end of a fortnight, the girl was able to swim. With her limbs
moving freely, rocked by the stream, playing with it, she yielded form
and spirit alike to its soft motion, to the silence of the heavens,
and the dreaminess of the melancholy banks. As she and Silvere swam
noiselessly along, she seemed to see the foliage of both banks thicken
and hang over them, draping them round as with a huge curtain. When
the moon shone, its rays glided between the trunks of the trees, and
phantoms seemed to flit along the river-side in white robes. Miette felt
no nervousness, however, only an indefinable emotion as she followed
the play of the shadows. As she went onward with slower motion, the calm
water, which the moon converted into a bright mirror, rippled at
her approach like a silver-broidered cloth; eddies widened and lost
themselves amid the shadows of the b