She lowered her eyes, as she had lowered them before, without confusion, with more than human coquetry. When her eyelids lifted, slowly, it seemed to me that I saw in her look a dawn of tenderness. She took my hand and hurried me along. THE OTHER Come quickly, they are waiting for us. Under a green arbour, rustic chairs were arranged round a heavy table of axe-hewn wood. A bowl of milk, cups of flowers, brown bread, strawberries; it was Virgilian. The little one spread the petals of a red rose on the milk into which she was dropping the strawberries. THE LITTLE ONE They are my lips. I give you my kisses. She blushed deeply as she said it, and her big friend drew her into her arms and kissed her eyes. When we had begun to take this matutinal repast, my friend, taking no further notice of the young women, renewed the conversation their arrival had interrupted. We were seated facing each other, two of our companions together on one side, and on the other the little one, who was busied in arranging according to their shades all kinds of flowers that she had picked in the course of the walk. HE My father ... You were speaking of my father. I am afraid you have an exaggerated idea of him. He was certainly very powerful, fairly intelligent, just, but, admit it, he was not good ... I You speak as if he no longer existed. HE He is not dead, but he is old. The gods end by growing old. He has retired into the eternal silence of disabused intellects. He still gives advice, he alone is capable of explaining certain human evolutions, but the indifference of age has dried up his heart. He has never much loved mankind, and now has turned from them entirely. I, on the other hand, love them.... I Lord.... I rose, to fall on my knees. He calmed my emotion with a gesture. HE Why "Lord"? I am not your lord. Listen to me, and reassure yourself. Observe these beautiful young women, their quiet, and their smiles. They play with flowers, they watch you with amused eyes: are you afraid of them? And yet, would you not say that they were goddesses? Ah! How your women are nearer than you men to nature, nearer to the divine! If you had had a mistress, I should have asked you to go and fetch her: she would have looked at me without timidity. The young women began to laugh. All three were now on the same side of the table, and, as they leaned over their scented harvest, murmuring like bees, stirring like lilies where the wind passes, one did not know if they were listening to the words of the master or to the words of the flowers. This spectacle helped to reassure me, after my friend's sayings, which, however, I did not understand. HE