agitation behind the
black grille of the trunks. It makes us dizzy to watch the swift
displacement of the gray-veiled sky, and from cloud to cloud a bird
seems hurled, like a stone. We go down towards the bottom of the
valley, clinging to the slope, an offering to the deepest breath of
heaven, driven forward yet holding each other back.

So, gorged with the gale and deafened by the universal concert of space
that goes through our ears, we find sanctuary on the river bank. The
water flows between trees whose highest foliage is intermingled. By a
dark footpath, soft and damp, under the ogive of the branches, we
follow this crystal-paved cloister of green shadow. We come on a
flat-bottomed boat, used by the anglers. I make Marie enter it, and it
yields and groans under her weight. By the strokes of two old oars we
descend the current.

It seems to our hearts and our inventing eyes that the banks take
flight on either side--it is the scenery of bushes and trees which
retreats. _We_--we abide! But the boat grounds among tall reeds.
Marie is half reclining and does not speak. I draw myself towards her
on my knees, and the boat quivers as I do. Her face in silence calls
me; she calls me wholly. With her prostrate body, surrendered and
disordered, she calls me.

I possess her--she is mine! In sublime docility she yields to my
violent caress. Now she is mine--mine forever! Henceforth let what
may befall; let the years go by and the winters follow the summers, she
is mine, and my life is granted me! Proudly I think of the great and
famous lovers whom we resemble. I perceive that there is no recognized
law which can stand against the might of love. And under the transient
wing of the foliage, amid the continuous recessional of heaven and
earth, we repeat "never"; we repeat "always"; and we proclaim it to
eternity.

* * * * * *

The leaves are falling; the year draws near to its end; the wedding is
arranged to take place about Christmas.

That decision was mine; Marie said "yes," as usual, and her father,
absorbed all the day in figures, would emerge from them at night, like
a shipwrecked man, seeing darkly, passive, except on rare occasions
when he had fits of mad obstinacy, and no one knew why.

In the early morning sometimes, when I was climbing Chestnut Hill on my
way to work, Marie would appear before me at a corner, in the pale and
blushing dawn. We would walk on