What a little girl's question! I come on earth as easily and as naturally as you go to America. How? The knowledge would be very useless to you, and could only tempt you to puerile and dangerous experiments. But there is another question that you dare not ask me, and to which I shall reply, for it is in your head if not upon your lips. Dearest children, bring us more flowers, bring us fruits, give us your smiles. The three young women awoke, and came to present their brows to us. My friend offered me her lips by mistake; I took advantage of this, which made her blush. She fled, rejoining her companions. It was clear and hot, though the sun was not visible. The light seemed to come from everywhere, and objects threw no shadows. This phenomenon, instead of frightening me, increased my sensation of happiness. It seemed to me that I had reached at last a state of beatitude long desired. Love sang in my heart. I observed with tenderness the folds of my friend's white dress, which floated behind her as she ran. Her garland of flowers fell, and, as she stooped to pick it up, her candid breasts showed at the edge of her corsage. I could not prevent myself from rushing towards her, in a frenzy, my mouth full of kisses and troubled words. I You have not hurt yourself? ELISE But I have not fallen. And she laughed, while she was fastening her hair. I had taken the garland, meanwhile, and was inhaling it like a bouquet. That made her laugh still more. I Flowers, Elise, have no longer their own odour when they have slept in your hair or on your neck; it is as if they had become you. It is your fragrance that I breathe.... ELISE As you like.... Elise also no longer knew very well what she was saying. Or was she, perhaps, reading my heart! Like my master, she had just replied to a prayer that I dared not formulate. I stretched out both arms to take with open hands the flower that I desired, the flower that was being given me, but Elise was already in flight. I caught her up in the middle of a thicket of lilacs. It was there that she gave me my happiness. Her dress, which was only a tunic, fell slowly, unveiling the loveliness of my divinity, who seemed to me to be Beauty herself. She was so beautiful that my admiration, for an instant, was stronger than my desire. My transport had carried me to the summit of a mountain so high that I became dizzy and my head spun. When I came to myself, it seemed to me that I had put on a new dignity, and that the resurrection that had snatched me from a delicious death was my entry into a more precious life. My friend, once more dressed in her robe, her garland of flowers on her refastened hair, was picking branches of lilac. I rose to help her, for an enormous sheaf was already filling her white arms; she gave it me, and then she made a harvest of pinks and roses, and we returned to my master.