“I am, of course,” said I, “but, you see that kind of happiness was not for us; so now, Belette, there is no use in self-reproaches, or regrets either. It would have been all the same by this time, whatever we had done; we are at the end of our string now, you know, and love or no love, it is all past like a tale that is told.” “Liar!” said she, and I felt that she spoke the truth, even as I looked at her. I kissed her once more, and left her; she leaned against the door-post looking after me, under the great spreading branches of the walnut tree, but I did not turn my head till I got round the corner, where I was sure that I could not see her; then I stopped to take breath a minute, and enjoy the scent of the honeysuckle. Down in the meadows I could see the white oxen still grazing as I left the path and took a short cut up the hillside and through the vines, until I got into the wood, where I turned aside for a moment. This was not the shortest way to continue my journey, but, there I stood for as much as half an hour, leaning against the trunk of a big oak tree, with my eyes fixed on vacancy, thinking, thinking. I could see the last red reflections of the western sky die out on the fresh vine leaves, which shone as if varnished, and hear the first faint note of a nightingale singing. I remembered an evening when my love and I were climbing side by side, up the steep vineyard, laughing and talking as we went, vigorous as the young life around us; but in the midst of our mirth, suddenly we fell silent, my hand closed on hers and there we stood motionless. Was it the sound of the Angelus, the evening breeze sighing about us, or the soft moonlight? From the shadowy vine leaves all at once arose the voice of a nightingale singing to keep himself awake, so that the treacherous tendrils might not twine about his poor little feet, and hold him prisoner, singing his eternal love-song; and I held Belette’s hand, saying: “The tendrils are around us, and like them we cling to each other.” Then we went back down the hill again, still hand in hand, till we reached her cottage.