Up to the last moment Clotilde had left the faces of the two figures vaguely outlined in a sort of mist. Pascal, standing behind her, jested with her to hide his emotion, for he fancied he divined her intention. And it was as he thought; she finished the faces with a few strokes of the crayon—old King David was he, and she was Abishag, the Shunammite. But they were enveloped in a dreamlike brightness, it was themselves deified; the one with hair all white, the other with hair all blond, covering them like an imperial mantle, with features lengthened by ecstasy, exalted to the bliss of angels, with the glance and the smile of immortal youth. “Ah, dear!” he cried, “you have made us too beautiful; you have wandered off again to dreamland—yes, as in the days, do you remember, when I used to scold you for putting there all the fantastic flowers of the Unknown?” And he pointed to the walls, on which bloomed the fantastic _parterre_ of the old pastels, flowers not of the earth, grown in the soil of paradise. But she protested gayly. “Too beautiful? We could not be too beautiful! I assure you it is thus that I picture us to myself, thus that I see us; and thus it is that we are. There! see if it is not the pure reality.” She took the old fifteenth century Bible which was beside her, and showed him the simple wood engraving. “You see it is exactly the same.” He smiled gently at this tranquil and extraordinary affirmation. “Oh, you laugh, you look only at the details of the picture. It is the spirit which it is necessary to penetrate. And look at the other engravings, it is the same theme in all—Abraham and Hagar, Ruth and Boaz. And you see they are all handsome and happy.” Then they ceased to laugh, leaning over the old Bible whose pages she turned with her white fingers, he standing behind her, his white beard mingling with her blond, youthful tresses. Suddenly he whispered to her softly: “But you, so young, do you never regret that you have chosen me—me, who am so old, as old as the world?” She gave a start of surprise, and turning round looked at him. “You old! No, you are young, younger than I!” And she laughed so joyously that he, too, could not help smiling. But he insisted a little tremulously: “You do not answer me. Do you not sometimes desire a younger lover, you who are so youthful?” She put up her lips and kissed him, saying in a low voice: “I have but one desire, to be loved—loved as you love me, above and beyond everything.”