ot tired, and
hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.

'We might sit down for a few minutes,' he suggested in a stammering
voice.

'No,' she replied, 'I don't want to.'

'But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other
day. We should be quite comfortable.'

'No, no; I don't want to.'

And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms
outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to
catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such
an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.

'I have hurt you?' he said.

She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,
and already smiling at her own alarm.

'No; leave me, don't worry me;' and she added in a grave tone, though
she tried to feign jocularity: 'you know that I have my tree to look
for.'

Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He
conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm
her, for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed
her slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden,
and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful
awe, which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The
perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through
the leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with
tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead
them to some perilous happiness.

And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their
reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,
though they never left each other's side, but went together through the
darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle
of saplings with trunks no thicker than a child's wrist. They had to
push them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender
shoots which threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The
saplings closed up again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage,
and they struggled on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be,
and leaving nothing behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary
waving of shaken boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more
than three steps in front of her, was delighted when they at last
found themselves free of this jungle, whose end they had long tried to
discove