recaution and artifice as for
the most dangerous act of smuggling.

In the rainy nights, so frequent in the Basque spring-time, she remained
in her room on the first floor, and he sat on the sill of the open
window, not trying to go in, not having the permission to do so. And
they stayed there, she inside, he outside, their arms laced, their heads
touching each other, the cheek of one resting on the cheek of the other.

When the weather was beautiful, she jumped over this low window-sill
to wait for him outside, and their long meetings, almost without words,
occurred on the garden bench. Between them there were not even those
continual whisperings familiar to lovers; no, there were rather
silences. At first they did not dare to talk, for fear of being
discovered, for the least murmurs of voices at night are heard. And
then, as nothing new threatened their lives, what need had they to talk?
What could they have said which would have been better than the long
contact of their joined hands and of their heads resting against each
other?

The possibility of being surprised kept them often on the alert, in an
anxiety which made more delicious afterward the moments when they forgot
themselves more, their confidence having returned.--Nobody frightened
them as much as Arrochkoa, a smart, nocturnal prowler himself, and
always so well-informed about the goings and comings of Ramuntcho--In
spite of his indulgence, what would he do, if he discovered them?--

Oh, the old stone benches, under branches, in front of the doors of
isolated houses, when fall the lukewarm nights of spring!--Theirs was a
real lovers' hiding place, and there was for them, every night, a
music, for, in all the stones of the neighbors' wall lived those singing
tree-toads, beasts of the south, which, as soon as night fell, gave from
moment to moment a little, brief note, discreet, odd, having the tone
of a crystal bell and of a child's throat. Something similar might be
produced by touching here and there, without ever resting on them,
the scales of an organ with a celestial voice. There were tree-toads
everywhere, responding to one another in different tones; even those
which were under their bench, close by them, reassured by their
immobility, sang also from time to time; then that little sound,
brusque and soft, so near, made them start and smile. All the exquisite,
surrounding obscurity was animated by that music, which continued in the
distance, in the