nically behind her neck.

'What do you want?' she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
'My comb! my comb! that's it.'

She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her
regal raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an
exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that
sunset-like refulgence.

But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
questioned unceasingly.

'Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my
wits like a good-for-nothing.... And yet the first few days I had done
you good. You saw me and spoke to me.... Do you remember when you were
lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that I did
you good?'

'No!' said Serge, 'no, I don't remember it. I had never seen you before.
I have only just seen you for the first time--lovely, radiant, never to
be forgotten.'

She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: 'And my comb? You must
remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were
a little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.'

'No, I don't remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
your hair before.'

At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of his
convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only laughed
at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with anxious
weariness: 'No, be quiet, I don't know; I don't want to know any
more.... I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with
roses. That is enough.'

And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming
aloud, and murmuring: 'Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a
long, long time ago.... I loved you in a painful dream. You had the same
blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But your
hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to
remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and
would have made me die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of
yourself. It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my
face in it like this, I drink in your very life.'

He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them