‘The Paradou!’ stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp the entire garden to his breast. He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair. There he sat for two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin resting on his hands. At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose to his cheeks. Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed. It was all too vast, too complex, too overpowering. ‘I cannot see, I cannot understand,’ he cried, stretching out his hands to Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness. The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair. Taking his head between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said: ‘It’s all our own. Nobody will ever come in. When you are well again, we will go for walks there. We shall have room enough for walking all our lives. We’ll go wherever you like. Where would you like to go?’ He smiled. ‘Oh! not far,’ he murmured. ‘The first day only two steps or so beyond the door. I should surely fall---- See, I’ll go over there, under that tree close to the window.’ But she resumed: ‘Would you like to go into the flower-garden, the parterre? You shall see the roses--they have over-run everything, even the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the orchard better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs are so bowed down with fruit. But we’ll go even farther if you feel strong enough. We’ll go as far as the forest, right into the depths of shade, far, far away; so far that we’ll sleep out there when night steals over us. Or else, some morning, we can climb up yonder to the summit of those rocks. You’ll see the plants which make me quake; you’ll see the springs, such a shower of water! What fun it will be to feel the spray all over our faces!... But if you prefer to walk along the hedges, beside a brook, we must go round by the meadows. It is so nice under the willows in the evening, at sunset. One can lie down on the grass and watch the little green frogs hopping about on the rushes.’ ‘No, no,’ said Serge, ‘you weary me, I don’t want to go so far.... I will only go a couple of steps, that will be more than enough.’ ‘Even I,’ she still continued, ‘even I have not yet been able to go everywhere. There are many nooks I don’t know. I have walked and walked in it for years, and still I feel sure there are unknown spots around, places where the shade must be cooler and the turf softer. Listen, I have always fancied there must be one especially in which I should like to live for ever. I know it’s somewhere; I must have passed it by, or perhaps it’s hidden so far away that I have never even got as far, with all my rambles. But we’ll look for it together, Serge, won’t we? and live there.’ ‘No, no, be quiet,’ stammered the young man. ‘I don’t understand what you are saying. You’re killing me.’ For a moment she let him sob in her arms. It troubled and grieved her that she could find no words to soothe him.