They scrambled over the bank of the way-side, entered a thicket and, side by side on the old dead leaves through which violets showed their buds, they stretched themselves out. The first songs of the birds and the distant thuds of the guns mingled with the village bells that were proclaiming the festival of the morrow. The luminous air vibrated hope, faith, love, death. Notwithstanding the solitude they spoke in whispers. Their hearts were oppressed: by happiness? or by sorrow? They could not have told. They were submerged in their dream. Lucile, immobile, stretched out, her arms close to her body, her eyes open, absorbed and gazing at the sky, felt rising in her a hidden suffering which since the morning she forced herself to drive away in order not to mar the joy of the holiday. Pierre laid his head on Luce's knees in the hollow of her skirt like a child who goes to sleep with its face close couched against the warmth of the stomach. And Luce without a word caressed with her hands the ears and eyes, the nose and lips of her beloved one. Dear spiritual hands which seemed, as in the tales about fairies, to have little mouths at the finger-tips! And Pierre, a thinking piano, divined the meaning of the little waves that sped under the tips, the emotions that passed through the soul of his darling. He heard her sigh before she had begun to sigh. Luce had raised herself with her body leaning forward and, with breathing oppressed, she moaned in a whisper: "Pierre, oh, Pierre!" Pierre looked at her troubled. "Oh, Pierre! What are we, anyway?... What is it they want of us?... What do we want?... What is this going on within us? These guns, these birds, this war, this love.... These hands, body, eyes.... Where am I?... and what am I?" Pierre, who did not recognize this expression of bewilderment in her, wanted to take her in his arms. But she repulsed him. "No! No!" And hiding her face in her hands she thrust face and hands together into the grass. Pierre was upset and begged of her: "Luce!..." He thrust his head close to that of Luce. "Luce," he repeated, "what's the matter with you? Is it against me?" She raised her head. "No!" And he saw tears in her eyes. "Are you in trouble?" "Yes." "Why?" "I don't know." "Tell me...." "Ah, I'm ashamed," she said.... "Ashamed? About what?" "About everything." She fell silent.