They were beggars. But they asked /themselves/ for charity.
They asked for help from their /own/ persons.

The boy, a man already, impoverished already by his feminine companion,
turned, drawn towards her, and held out his awkward arms, without
daring to look at her.

The girl, a woman already, leaned her face on the back of the sofa, her
eyes shining. Her cheeks were plump and rosy, tinted and warmed by her
heart. The skin of her neck, taut and satiny, quivered. Half-blown
and waiting, a little voluptuous because voluptuousness already
emanated from her, she was like a rose inhaling sunlight.

And I--I could not tear my eyes from them.

. . . . .

After a long silence, he murmured:

"Shall we stop calling each other by our first names?"

"Why?"

He seemed absorbed in thought.

"So as to begin over again," he said at last.

"Shall we, Miss Janvier?" he asked again.

She gave a visible start at the touch of this new manner of address, at
the word "Miss," as if it were a kind of embrace.

"Why, Mr. Lecoq," she ventured hesitatingly, "it is as though something
had covered us, and we were removing--"

Now, he became bolder.

"Shall we kiss each other on our mouths?"

She was oppressed, and could not quite smile.

"Yes," she said.

They caught hold of each other's arms and shoulders and held out their
lips, as if their mouths were birds.

"Jean!" "Helene!" came softly.

It was the first thing they had found out. To embrace the embracer, is
it not the tiniest caress and the least sort of a bond? And yet it is
so sternly prohibited.

Again they seemed to me to be without age.

They were like all lovers, while they held hands, their faces joined,
trembling and blind, in the shadow of a kiss.

. . . . .

They broke off, and disengaged themselves from their embrace, whose
meaning they had not yet learned.

They talked with their innocent lips. About what? About the past,
which was so near and so short.

They were leaving their paradise of childhood and ignorance. They
spoke of a house and a garden where they had both lived.

The house absorbed them. It was surrounded by a garden wall, so that
from the road all you could see was the tip of the eaves, and you
couldn't tell what was going on inside of it.

They prattled:

"The rooms, when we were little and they were so big--"

"It was easier to walk there than anywhere else."

To hear the children talk, you would have thought ther