With the heavy rains alternates the marvellously beautiful weather which gives to the air absolute limpidities. And there are days also when somewhat distant things are as if eaten by light, powdered with sun dust; then, above the woods and the village of Etchezar, the Gizune, very pointed, becomes more vaporous and more high, and, on the sky, float, to make it appear bluer, very small clouds of a gilded white with a little mother-of-pearl gray in their shades. And the springs run thinner and rarer under the thickness of the ferns, and, along the routes, go more slowly, driven by half nude men, the ox-carts which a swarm of flies surrounds. At this season, Ramuntcho, in the day-time, lived his agitated life of a pelotari, running with Arrochkoa from village to village, to organize ball-games and play them. But, in his eyes, evenings alone existed. Evenings!--In the odorous and warm darkness of the garden, to be seated very near Gracieuse; to put his arm around her, little by little to draw her to him and hold her against his breast, and remain thus for a long time without saying anything, his chin resting on her hair, breathing the young and healthy scent of her body. He enervated himself dangerously, Ramuntcho, in these prolonged contacts which she did not prohibit. Anyway, he divined her surrendered enough to him now, and confident enough, to permit everything; but he did not wish to attempt supreme communion, through childish reserve, through respect for his betrothed, through excess and profoundness of love. And it happened to him at times to rise abruptly, to stretch himself--in the manner of a cat, she said, as formerly at Erribiague--when he felt a dangerous thrill and a more imperious temptation to leave life with her in a moment of ineffable death-- CHAPTER XXIV. Franchita, however, was astonished by the unexplained attitude of her son, who, apparently, never saw Gracieuse and yet never talked of her. Then, while was amassing in her the sadness of his coming departure for military service, she observed him, with her peasant's patience and muteness. One evening, one of the last evenings, as he was going away, mysterious and in haste, long before the hour of the nocturnal contraband, she straightened before him, her eyes fixed on his: “Where are you going, my son?” And seeing him turn his head, blushing and embarrassed, she acquired a sudden certainty: “It is well, now I know.--Oh! I know!--”