At first it seemed a renewal of the old comradeship of early youth. 'Don't bother about that tiresome play of yours. It will only get hissed. Come and help me to look whether Minouche has carried my ball of thread on to the top of the cupboard,' said Pauline.
He held a chair for her, while she mounted upon it, and, standing on tip-toes, looked for the missing thread. The rain had been falling for the last two days and they could not leave the big room. Their laughter rang out as they kept on unearthing some relic of old days.
'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.
'Take care!' cried Lazare; 'there is a hole there, you know, and the bottom of it is full of big stones.'
'Oh, yes, I know; don't be frightened——Oh! do come and look at this huge crab I have just caught!'
The cool waves splashed round their legs and the fresh salt breezes from the sea intoxicated them. All their old rambles were resumed—the long walks, the pleasant rests on the sands, the hasty refuge sought in some hollow of the cliffs at the approach of sudden showers, and the return home at nightfall along the dusky paths. Nothing seemed changed; the sea, with its ceaselessly varying aspect, still stretched out into the boundless distance. Little forgotten incidents returned to their memory with all the vividness of present facts. Lazare seemed to be still six-and-twenty and Pauline sixteen. When he casually happened to pull her about with his old playful familiarity, she seemed greatly embarrassed, however, and was thrilled with delicious confusion. But she in no way tried to avoid him, for she had no thought of the possibility of evil. Fresh life began to animate them; there were whispered words, causeless laughter, long intervals of silence which left them quivering. The most trivial incidents—a request for some bread, a remark about the weather, the good-nights they wished each other as they went to bed—seemed full of a new and strange meaning. All their past life was reviving within them and thrilling them with the tenderness that comes of the remembrance of former happiness. Why should they have felt anxious? They did not resist the spell; the sea, with its ceaseless monotonous voice, seemed to lull and fill them with pleasant languor.