"But we were gone. We had slipped through the hole in the hedge where a bird always sang. There was no wind, and scarcely any light. Even the trees didn't stir. The dust on the ground was dead. The shadows stole round us so softly that we almost spoke to them. We were frightened to see night coming on. Everything had lost its colour. But the night was clear, and the flowers, the road, even the wheat were silver. And it was then that my mouth came closest to your mouth." "The night," she said, her soul carried aloft on a wave of beauty, "the night caresses the caresses." "I took your hand, and I knew that you would live life whole. When I used to say 'Hélène,' I did not know what I was saying. Now, when I shall say 'she,' it will be everything." Once more their lips joined. Their mouths and their eyes were those of Adam and Eve. I recalled the ancestral lesson from which sacred history and human history flow as from a fountain. They wandered in the penetrating light of paradise without knowledge. They were as if they did not exist. When--through triumphant curiosity, though forbidden by God himself--they learned the secret, the sky was darkened. The certainty of a future of sorrow had fallen upon them. Angels pursued them like vultures. They grovelled on the ground from day to day, but they had created love, they had replaced divine riches by the poverty of belonging to each other. The two little children had taken their parts in the eternal drama. By talking to each other as they did they had restored to their first names their full significance. "I should like to love you more. I should like to love you harder. How could I?" . . . . . They said no more, as though there were no more words for them. They were completely absorbed in themselves, and their hands trembled. Then they rose, and as they did so, the door opened. There stood the old stooping grandmother. She came out of the grey, out of the realm of phantoms, out of the past. She was looking for them as if they had gone astray. She called them in a low voice. She put into her tone a great gentleness, almost sadness, strangely harmonising with the children's presence. "You are here, children?" she said, with a kind little laugh. "What are you doing here? Come, they are looking for you." She was old and faded, but she was angelic, with her gown fastened up to her neck. Beside these two, who were preparing for the large life, she was, thenceforth, like a child, inactive, useless. They rushed into her arms, and pressed their foreheads against her saintly mouth. They seemed to be saying good-by to her forever. . . . . . She went out. And a moment afterwards they followed her, hastily, as they had come, united now by an invisible and sublime bond. On the threshold, they looked at each other once more. And now that the room was empty like a deserted sanctuary, I thought of their glance, their first glance of love, which I had seen.