They went on in this manner until the tragic hour when the stars shine in the nocturnal sky, now walking over the shingle, now getting into the little carriage again, ceaselessly following the same paths again and again, without being able to make up their minds to return, as though understanding that they might again experience other moments of happiness, but of happiness such as this, never! The dim intuition of the universal soul, of which visible forms and invisible feelings are alike the effect, revealed to them, unknown to themselves, a mysterious analogy, and, as it were, a divine correspondence between the particular face of this corner of nature and the undefined essence of their tenderness. She said to him: "To be with you here is a happiness too great to admit of a return to life," and he did not smile with incredulity at these words, as she felt assured when he said to her: "It seems to me that I have never opened my eyes upon a landscape until this moment." And when they walked it was he who took Theresa's arm and leaned coaxingly upon it. Without knowing it he thus symbolised the strange reversal of parts in this attachment in accordance with which he, with his frail person, his entire innocence, and the purity of his timorous emotions, had always represented the feminine element. Certainly she, on her part, was quite a woman, with the suppleness of her gait, the feline refinement of her manners, and those liquid eyes which threw themselves into every look. Nevertheless she appeared a stronger creature and one better armed for life than the delicate child, the fragile handiwork of the tenderness of two pure women, whom she had enmeshed in so slight a tissue of seduction, and who, scarcely taller than herself by a quarter of an inch of forehead, surrendered himself with fraternal confidence; while the mere movement of their gait spoke clearly enough in its perfect, rhythmical harmony, of the complete union of their hearts, causing them to beat at that moment closely together. They went in again. The dinner following this afternoon of dreams was a silent and almost sombre one. It seemed as though they were both afraid the one of the other. Or was it merely with her a recrudescence of that dread of displeasing him which had made her defer the surrender of her person until this hour, and with him that sort of intractable melancholy which is the last sign of primitive animality, and which precedes in man every entry into complete love? As happens at such times, their speech was calmer and more indifferent in proportion as the disquietude of their hearts was increased. These two lovers, who had spent the day in the most romantic exaltation, and who were met in the solitude of this foreign retreat, seemed to have nothing to say to each other but sentences concerning the world that they had left.