“Yes, for Paris.” She could not conceal her discontent. “Always Paris. You talk about it all the time. You are obsessed by it.” “It’s in Paris that I must earn my daily bread,” he replied, in a melancholy voice. Supply and fawningly she slid into his arms, and sought the red of his lips beneath his moustache, murmuring close to him: “I asked you for one year of your life. To live one year with neither past nor future, to breathe in our tenderness every day, to have you forget all the rest of the world for me. Don’t you remember?” “Have I not done all this for you, and much more, too?” “There’s one day due me. To-morrow is our anniversary.” “To-morrow, Edith,” he repeated, with some emotion. All trembling with her memories she stood erect again. “Don’t spoil this day that’s left us. Since it’s the last, let’s have it the most beautiful of our year that has run away drop by drop. Don’t let us talk of the future before to-morrow. Will you promise me?” He smiled at so much ecstasy. “I’ll do as you wish.” “Then I’ll go and dress. It won’t take long. And we’ll go out together. We’ll have lunch on the island.” She disappeared, and during her absence he tried to begin again at his work on the translation. But for the second time he began the phrase from Lamartine: “_The predestined fate of the child is the home in which it was born_----” And again he paused. Edith was right. The present did not suffice him any more, had never sufficed him. By tacit consent they had both of them brushed aside the future, but into the past, of which they dared not speak, their minds looked when their mouths were mute. Silence, for him, became a supplication. Beyond those nearer mountains there, at this hour, what were _they_ doing, those dear ones from whom he had no news? Edith reappeared on the threshold, soliciting his approval. “Don’t you think I look nice this morning?” She wore a summer dress of white serge, which, without fitting too closely, outlined her flexible form, and a hat surmounted by white wings, which gave her whole person a finishing touch of light and slender grace. This year had rejuvenated her. Her eyes of fire could not have flashed more brilliantly than before, but her cheeks were rounder and less pale. Her thin body had taken on an appearance of weight, and through her whole person was diffused an indefinable and pervasive air of love. He admired her, but did not put in words the compliment for which she waited. They went down to the port of Orta by a steeply inclined path, paved with round stones, so little used that grass was growing in the crevices. In the square, before the bank where the boats were moored, they came upon a young girl in a red bonnet, whom they had already encountered several times in their walks and who must have lived somewhere near. The little foreigner stared at them, especially Maurice, without timidity. “She is pretty,” remarked Maurice, after they had passed.