‘Wait out here,’ said Albine, when they once more stood before the pavilion; ‘don’t come up for three minutes.’
Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.
‘Good morrow, my dear lord,’ she said as she embraced him.
This amused them extremely. They played at being lovers with childish glee. In stammering accents they would have revived the passion which had once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at learning a lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other’s lips, but sought each other’s cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other, with shrieks of laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the pleasure they experienced from their mutual love.
IX
The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back before nightfall.
‘Where are you going to take me?’ asked Serge.
‘You will see, you will see.’
But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the face. ‘You must not be foolish, you know. I won’t have you hunting for that glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one droops and dies. You know that it is forbidden.’