and tied round his waist, a linen belt with a
large pocket containing, no doubt, a case of instruments and bottles of
restoratives.

Then he took the lantern from where it hung to the ceiling and lighted
it. It was a dark lantern. When lighted it still left the children in
shadow.

Ursus half opened the door, and said,--

"I am going out; do not be afraid. I shall return. Go to sleep."

Then letting down the steps, he called Homo. He was answered by a
loving growl.

Ursus, holding the lantern in his hand, descended. The steps were
replaced, the door was reclosed. The children remained alone.

From without, a voice, the voice of Ursus, said,--

"You, boy, who have just eaten up my supper, are you already asleep?"

"No," replied the child.

"Well, if she cries, give her the rest of the milk."

The clinking of a chain being undone was heard, and the sound of a man's
footsteps, mingled with that of the pads of an animal, died off in the
distance. A few minutes after, both children slept profoundly.

The little boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through
the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such
dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other;
beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the
word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband
and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence in such
darkness, such purity in such an embrace; such foretastes of heaven are
possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of
little children. Of all gulfs this is the deepest. The fearful
perpetuity of the dead chained beyond life, the mighty animosity of the
ocean to a wreck, the whiteness of the snow over buried bodies, do not
equal in pathos two children's mouths meeting divinely in sleep,[10] and
the meeting of which is not even a kiss. A betrothal perchance,
perchance a catastrophe. The unknown weighs down upon their
juxtaposition. It charms, it terrifies; who knows which? It stays the
pulse. Innocence is higher than virtue. Innocence is holy ignorance.
They slept. They were in peace. They were warm. The nakedness of their
bodies, embraced each in each, amalgamated with the virginity of their
souls. They were there as in the nest of the abyss.

CHAPTER VI.

THE AWAKING.

The beginning of day is sinister. A sad pale light penetrated the hut.
It was the frozen dawn. Tha