"Oh, my first ball-dress," she said to him one day; "I can see it now--it was a pink tulle one. The dressmaker didn't bring it--- it was raining--and we couldn't get a cab. How you did hurry along! And how queer you looked when you came back carrying a cardboard box! And you were so wet when you kissed me! I remember it all so well." Renee had only herself and her own courage to depend on, in her task of keeping her father up and herself too. Her mother was there, of course; but ever since Henri's death she had been buried in a sort of silent apathy. She was indifferent to all that went on, mute and absent-minded. She was there with her daughter, night and day, without a murmur, patient and always even-tempered, ready to do anything, as docile and humble as a servant, but her affection seemed almost mechanical. The soul had gone out of her caresses, and all her ministrations were for the body rather than the heart; there was nothing of the mother about her now except the hands. LV Renee could still drag along with her father to the first trees of the little wood near the house. She would then sink down with her back against the moss of an oak-tree on the boundary of the wood. The smell of hay from the fields, an odour of grass and honey came to her there with a delicious warmth from the sunshine, the fresh air from the wood, damp from the cool springs and the unmade paths. In the midst of the deep silence, an immense, indistinct rustling could be heard, and a hum and buzz of winged creatures, which filled the air with a ceaseless sound like that of a bee-hive and the infinite murmur of the sea. All around Renee, and near to her, there seemed to be a great living peace, in which everything was being swayed--the gnat in the air, the leaf on the branch, the shadows on the bark of the trees, the tops of the trees against the sky, and the wild oats on each side of the paths. Then from this murmur came the sighing sound of a deep respiration, a breeze coming from afar which made the trees tremble as it passed them, while the blue of the heavenly vault above the shaking leaves seemed fixed and immovable. The boughs swayed slowly up and down, a breath passed over Renee's temples and touched her neck, a puff of wind kissed and cheered her. Gradually she began to lose all consciousness of her physical being, the sensation and fatigue of living; an exquisite languor took possession of her, and it seemed to her as though she were partially freed from her material body and were just ready to pass away in the divine sweetness of all these things. Every now and then she nestled closer to her father like a child who is afraid of being carried away by a gust of wind.