‘Good night, Albine.’
They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor, without entering the room where they usually wished each other good night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine’s every movement in the room above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.
XII
For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath the trees. They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their confession of love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed their lips, but rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness. When they were apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love’s awakening, plunged into it, passed once more through the happy hours which they had spent, with their arms around each other’s waist, and their faces close together. It all ended by throwing them both into a feverish state. They looked at each other with heavy eyes, and talked, in a melancholy mood, of things that did not interest them in the least. Then, after a long interval of silence, Serge would say to Albine in a tone full of anxiety: ‘You are ill?’
But she shook her head as she answered, ‘No, no. It is you who are not well; your hands are burning.’
The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they could not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some by-path, and would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about these disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them the mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to Serge: ‘It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill again.’
Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. ‘Bah!’ he muttered, ‘we have been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.’
But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, ‘No, no, we don’t know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to be actually alive.’
The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where the marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest stones, Serge remarked: ‘We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel quieter afterwards.’