Odile withdrew slightly. With something of fear in her look she was trying to find out if Jean was speaking the truth--if she had guessed aright. He was watching her in an agony of anxiety. They were motionless, trembling, and so near and yet so far from each other that one would have said that they were threatening each other. And in fact both felt that the peace of their lives was at stake. They were not children, but a man and a woman of a strong and passionate race. All the powers of their being asserted themselves and broke through the hackneyed commonplaces of custom, because in these simple words, "I must speak to you," Odile had heard the breath of a soul which was giving itself, and which demanded a return. In the deserted avenue the old cherry-trees lifted their white distaffs of blossom, and in the cup of each flower the spring sun was resting. "The day after to-morrow?" she said, "at Sainte Odile--to hear the bells ring?" She repeated what he had said. But that was to gain time, and to gaze deeper into those eyes fixed upon her, eyes which looked like the green depths of the forest. There was a great calm in the plain and in the next village. The wind ceased for a moment--Odile turned away. "I will go," she said. Neither of them explained themselves further. A covered cart rolled along the road, not far off. A man shut the gate through which carts pass to the Bastians' farm. But the great thing was Jean had said what he had to say. In the profound depths of their souls the words echoed and re-echoed. They were no longer alone. Both had the sacred moment of their meeting enclosed, as it were, in themselves, and they fell back on their own thoughts as the earth in the furrows does when the sowing is done, and the germinating seed is beginning to expand. Odile went away. Jean admired the healthy and beautiful woman disappearing along the road. She walked well, without swinging her body. Above the white neck, Jean placed in imagination the big black bows of the Alsatian women who live beyond Strasburg. She no longer raised her eyes towards the cherry-trees. She let her skirt trail, and it swept the grass, making a little dust fly, and the petals of cherry blossoms, which flew about a little in the wind before dying. * * * * * The day after to-morrow was slow in coming. Jean had said to his father: "Some pilgrims are going up to Sainte Odile on Saturday to hear the Easter bells. I have never been there at this time. If you do not mind, it is an excursion I should much like to make." He did not mind. Jean opened his window when he woke that morning. There was a thick fog. The fields near the house were invisible. "You will not go in this weather?" asked Lucienne, when she saw her brother come into the dining-room, where she was drinking her chocolate. "Yes, I shall go." "You will see nothing." "I shall hear." "Is it then so extraordinary?" "Yes." "Then will you take me?"