Serge felt more powerful and virile on seeing her so humble. ‘Why are you trembling so?’ he asked her; ‘I can have no cause to reproach you.’
But she did not answer him, she gazed almost sadly upon the tree and the foliage and the grass around them.
‘Foolish child!’ he said, laughing; ‘are you afraid that I shall be angry with you for your love? We have loved as we were meant to love. Let me kiss you.’
But, dropping her eyelids so that she might not see the tree, she said, in a low whisper, ‘Take me away!’
Serge led her thence, pacing slowly and giving one last glance at the spot which love had hallowed. The shadows in the clearing were growing darker, and a gentle quiver coursed through the foliage. When they emerged from the wood and caught sight of the sun, still shining brightly in the horizon, they felt easier. Everything around Serge now seemed to bend down before him and pay homage to his love. The garden was now nothing but an appanage of Albine’s beauty, and seemed to have grown larger and fairer amid the love-kisses of its rulers.
But Albine’s joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.
‘Nothing,’ she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.
They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were. To lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse them as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By degrees they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a labyrinth of bushes.
‘Don’t you hear?’ asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped short, almost breathless.
Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could no longer conceal.
‘All the coppice seems full of voices,’ she continued. ‘It sounds as though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn’t that a laugh that sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur something as my dress brushed against it?’
‘No, no,’ he said, anxious to reassure her, ‘the garden loves us; and, if it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don’t you remember all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are nervous and fancy things.’
But she shook her head and faltered: ‘I know very well that the garden is our friend.... So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am certain I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and hide me somewhere, I beseech you.’