And she placed her hand on the wet fruit piled before her. They were magnificent peaches, of a deep crimson on one side as if the rising sun had painted them on seeing them hanging ripe on the branch. That strange dew seemed to revivify them.
"What a marvel!" she said, taking the most luxurious one.
Without removing the skin, she bit it greedily. The juice ran from the corners of her mouth, yellow as liquid honey.
"You bite now!"
She held the streaming peach out to her lover, with the same gesture she had offered him the rest of the bread beneath the oak in the twilight of the first day.
That recollection awoke in George's memory; and he felt a desire to speak of it.
"Do you remember," he said, "do you remember the first evening, when you bit the bread fresh from the oven, and you gave it me all warm and humid? Do you remember? How good it seemed to me!"
"I remember everything. Can I forget the slightest incident of that day?"
She saw again, in imagination, the path all strewn with furze, the fresh and delicate homage shed on her path. For a few moments she remained silent, absorbed by that vision of poesy.
"The furze!" she murmured, with an unexpected smile of regret.