“She laughs!” murmured the astonished Ralph. “And not with her artificial and almost dolorous stage laugh, but with the care-free laugh of one who has no crimes to remember, a laugh in which her true nature finds expression. She laughs—what a miracle!” Then the others went back to their lessons and Aurelie remained alone. She did not appear any the more melancholy for that; her gayety did not leave her. She busied herself with trifles such as gathering the pine cones and filling a basket with them, or plucking flowers and laying them on the steps of a neighboring chapel. Her actions were all gracious. She often talked in a low voice to a little dog who was always with her, or to a cat who was always rubbing itself against her calves. Once she twined herself a garland of roses and laughing, looked at herself in a pocket mirror. Furtively she powdered her cheeks and put a little rouge on them and at once rubbed it roughly off. It must have been forbidden. On the eighth day she made her way along the wall to the last and highest of the terraces, along the edge of which ran a hedge of shrubs. On the ninth day she returned to it, bringing a book. On the tenth day before the hour of recreation Ralph made up his mind. First of all he had to force his way through the thick underwood on the edge of the pine forest, then cross a large sheet of water. The brook of Sainte-Marie flows into a basin, as into a large reservoir, and then sinks under the earth. A worm-eaten boat was moored to a stake, and by means of it he was able, in spite of some fairly strong eddies, to reach a little creek at the very foot of the high terrace which rose like the rampart of a fortress. The walls of it were made of flat stones set, without mortar, on the top of one another, and wild plants grew between them. The rain had worn runnels full of sand along the face of the wall and paths, which the boys of the neighborhood would on occasion climb. Ralph climbed to the top without difficulty. The terrace formed a kind of summer drawing-room, surrounded by shrubs and set with stone benches; its center was adorned with a fine terra cotta bowl. He heard the murmur of the girls at play below. Then there came silence and a few minutes later the sound of a light footfall coming towards him. A voice was humming an air from an opera. His heart began to beat quickly. What would she say when she saw him? The branches rustled; the foliage was parted like curtains that hang before the door of a room; Aurelie entered. She stopped short on the threshold of the terrace with an air of stupefaction; the song died on her lips. Her book and her straw hat, which she had filled with flowers and hung by the ribbons from her arm, fell to the ground. She did not stir, an engaging and delicate figure in her simple dress of chestnut cloth. For a few seconds she failed to recognize Ralph. Then she blushed deeply and stepped back. “Go away,” she murmured. “Go away.”