t it, with growing animation, as if he
were at last coming back to life.

'You won't give me anything nasty to drink, will you? You won't worry me
with all sorts of physic? Your hand is quite enough for me. I have come
here for you to put it there under my head.'

'Dear Serge,' said Albine softly, 'how you must have suffered.'

'Suffered! yes, yes; but it's a long time ago. I slept badly, I had such
frightful dreams. If I could, I would tell you all about it.'

He closed his eyes for a moment and strove hard to remember.

'I can see nothing but darkness,' he stammered. 'It is very odd, I
have just come back from a long journey. I don't even know now where I
started from. I had fever, I know, a fever that raced through my veins
like a wild beast. That was it--now I remember. The whole time I had a
nightmare, in which I seemed to be crawling along an endless underground
passage; and every now and then I had an attack of intolerable pain, and
then the passage would be suddenly walled up. A shower of stones fell
from overhead, the side walls closed in, and there I stuck, panting,
mad to get on; and then I bored into the obstacle and battered away with
feet and fists, and skull, despairing of ever being able to get through
the ever increasing mound of rubbish. At other times, I only had to
touch it with my finger and it vanished: I could then walk freely along
the widened gallery, weary only from the pangs of my attack.'

Albine tried to lay a hand upon his lips.

'No,' said he, 'it doesn't tire me to talk. I can whisper to you
here, you see. I feel as if I were thinking and you could hear me. The
queerest point about that underground journey of mine was that I hadn't
the faintest idea of turning back again; I got obstinate, although I had
the thought before me that it would take me thousands of years to clear
away a single heap of wreckage. It seemed a fated task, which I had to
fulfil under pain of the greatest misfortunes. So, with my knees all
bruised, and my forehead bumping against the hard rock, I set myself
to work with all my might, so that I might get to the end as quickly as
possible. The end? What was it?... Ah! I do not know, I do not know.'

He closed his eyes and pondered dreamily. Then, with a careless pout, he
again sank upon Albine's hand and said laughing: 'How silly of me! I am
a child.'

But the girl, to ascertain if he were wholly hers, questioned him and
led him back to the confused recollecti