Then she rose--but before they left the room, they closed the unpretentious double door upon the objects of a dead cult, left in the darkness of abandonment--the goblet without wine, the pyx without bread, and the consecrated host, whose polished metal case held naught within. X THE TERRACE He was well aware that he needed no fever medicine, and that his fever did not come from the swamps. She said no more about the drug, but as they stood on the landing and he was preparing to descend, she said: "Suppose we go out on the terrace?" Livette wished to prolong the tête-à-tête, to ascertain if, after her prayer, she would find _her_ Renaud in him once more. He placed his lamp on the floor at the top of the staircase, and, pushing open the door just above the last step, they both stood on the terrace that overlooks the whole château. A square terrace, and in the centre the great bell lay upon its side in its iron cage--the great bell, three feet in diameter, that in the old days called to work as well as to prayer, and when it rang the Angelus caused the fever-haunted farm-laborers to fall upon their knees on the brink of the miasmatic bogs. Both of them, one after the other, mechanically struck the bell with their foot, as it lay there on its side. It gave forth a short, plaintive note, quickly stifled by contact with the flag-stones. It was like the sigh of a mystery-haunted soul. With hearts as sad as the bell, they leaned on the stone parapet in presence of the night. Livette and Renaud loved each other, but affection was no longer enough for him. The sap of the spring-time, boiling in his veins in lustful desire, gave birth, in Livette's heart, to sweet flowers of reverie. The swarming of the stars above their heads was beyond comprehension. They were as many as the gadflies and frogs in the desert, or the waves of the sea. They seemed to open and half close, like flowers in a meadow, waved to and fro by a light, quickly-passing breath, like eyelids making signs. They seemed to have something to say, to move like lips speaking a living language, telling of something of great moment that must be known at once--but no sound coming from them reaches the ears of men, for human hearing is not keen enough. Nor is the human sight keen enough to see that the dust of the Milky-Way (pale as the pollen of flowers) is also made of stars. Though men have seen it with a different sight, afforded by man's inventive genius, that sight is powerless to pierce farther and deeper--to learn all there is to know.