There were few people here at this hour. A handful of scattered strollers. Paris hummed like a hive in the distance. The blue vibration of a beautiful summer morning. He picked out a bench that was hidden at the foot of a group of trees, and he closed his eyes on his treasure. He pressed his long, feverish, adolescent hands against his breast as if he wished to shelter his heart from rash eyes. What was he hiding, what thing so precious that he scarcely dared to think of it? A remark Noémi had thoughtlessly uttered, a remark of which he had made a world. . . . The last time he had seen her she had thrown him a chance smile. She had been scarcely aware of the boy's presence, for her attention was absorbed in the great things that had happened (the reconquest of Philippe, the humiliation of Annette, the final victory! . . . "But one never knows! Nothing is certain. Let us be satisfied with to-day! . . .") She sighed from fatigue, relaxation, pleasure. Marc asked her why. Amused by the boy's alarmed, ingenuous gaze, she said, with another great sigh, to puzzle him, "It's a secret." "What secret?" A malicious thought darted through her mind and Noémi replied, "I can't tell you. You must guess." Trembling with emotion, he said, "I don't know. Tell me." She lowered her lids over her languorous eyes. "No, no, no!" Blushing, stammering, he was afraid to understand. To keep up the game, she assumed a mysterious air and said, "Would you like to have it?" In his emotion he was ready to cry, "No!" "Well, not to-day. . . . I'll tell you some other time." "When?" "Soon." "How soon?" "Soon. . . . Next week, when you come to dinner." The week had passed. This was the evening, Marc was thinking, when he was to see her again. He was only living in the expectation of that moment. He had lived it through twenty times in advance! He never dared to go to the end of the scene. It was too agonizing. . . . But to linger on the way was so sweet! On the garden-bench he gave way to his languor. A clock struck noon. Behind a screen of trees the sand of a sunny path crunched under the feet of a little girl who passed singing. Further on, in an aviary, some exotic birds were chirping in a strange, agitating language. From far away, on the Seine, came the long-drawn-out sound of the siren of a tug. And noiselessly, without seeing him, two lovers passed him slowly with their arms entwined as they walked, a tall, dark girl and a pale young workman whose lips touched and who devoured each other with their eyes. Holding his breath, the boy gazed after them till their path turned, and as they disappeared he sobbed with happiness, the happiness that had passed, the happiness that was coming. The happiness that was in them, in everything that surrounded him, in this July noon--in his own burning heart which embraced it all.