'Oh, see! here is the doll which you made out of two of my old collars. Ah! and this--don't you remember?--is the portrait of you that I drew the day when you made yourself so frightfully ugly by getting into a rage and crying, because I wouldn't lend you my razor.' Then Pauline wagered that she could still jump at a single bound on to the table; Lazare, too, jumped, quite glad at being drawn out of himself. His play was already lying neglected in a drawer. One morning when they came across the great symphony on Grief she played portions of it to him, accentuating the rhythm in a comical fashion. He made fun of his composition and sang the notes to support the piano, whose weak tones could scarcely be heard. But one little bit, the famous March of Death, made them both serious; it was really not bad, and must be preserved. Everything pleased them and struck a chord of tenderness in their hearts: a collection of _floridæ_ which Pauline had once mounted, and which they now discovered behind some books; a forgotten jar containing a sample of the bromide of potassium which they had extracted from the seaweed; a small broken model of a stockade, which looked as though it had been wrecked by a storm in a tea-cup. Then they romped over the house, chasing each other like schoolboys at play. They were perpetually rushing up and down the stairs and scampering through the rooms, banging the doors noisily. It seemed as if the old days had come back again. She was ten years old once more, and he was nineteen; and she again felt for him all the enthusiastic friendship of a little girl. Nothing was changed. In the dining-room there still remained the sideboard of bright walnut, the polished brass hanging-lamp, the view of Vesuvius, and the four lithographs of the Seasons, while the grandfather's masterpiece still slumbered in its old place. There was only one room which they entered with silent emotion--that which Madame Chanteau had occupied, and which had been unused since her death. The secrétaire was never opened now, but the hangings of yellow cretonne, with their pattern of flower-work, were fading from the bright sunlight which was occasionally allowed to enter the room. It so happened that the anniversary of Madame Chanteau's birth came round about this time, and they decked the room with big bunches of flowers. Soon, however, as the wind rose and dispersed the rain-clouds, they betook themselves out of doors on to the terrace, into the kitchen-garden and along the cliffs, and their youth began anew. 'Shall we go shrimping?' Pauline cried to her cousin one morning, through the partition, as she sprang out of bed. 'The tide is going down.' They set off in bathing costumes, and once more found the old familiar rocks on which the sea had wrought no perceptible change during the past weeks and months. They could have fancied that they had been exploring that part of the coast only the day before.