The sun had gone down behind Mount Lépine. But before their eyes the evening sky was glorious in a golden veil whose reflection fell languidly on the waters of Lake Bourget. Le Revard and the Mont du Chat, whose summits still shone in the light, tried desperately to catch the last of the day of which their lofty heights had given them so large a share. And the plain stretched out in a haze of blue and pink, which spread over all things like a fall of flower-petals and effaced all distinctions of shape and space.
“Look,” said Paule at last, pointing to the skyline.
The two girls rose at once to catch the effect of the sunset on the lake to better advantage. Marcel had eyes for Alice only, in her white robe, looking like a tall, graceful lily, her pure profile outlined against the gold of the sky like the haloed angels of the pious Quatrocentist painters. She turned slowly towards him, her long lashes quivering over her dazzled eyes, and smiled at him gently as she said:
“I can look no longer. The sun hurts my eyes.”
Paule thought of the time when she and her brothers loved to stare at the sun itself without lowering their eyelids. But Marcel, stirred in spite of himself by the sight of so fragile a beauty, felt his heart beat furiously, and was full of those longings for sacrifice which accompany the dawn of love.
“Alice,” came the voice of Madame Dulaurens, “you must not stay out in the cold air.”
A little later Marcel and Paule left. They got back to Le Maupas by a path half hidden under the grass which borders the Forezan ravine and crosses a wood of beech and birch before joining the Vimines road. Through the foliage an occasional glimpse could be caught of a pink and mauve sky, a sky of happy omen. And yet the brother and sister were silent, lost in their own thoughts.
“You weren’t bored, Paule, were you?” asked Marcel at last.
“I? No, I went to La Chênaie to please you. Are you pleased?”
He did not answer at once. Without looking at Paule, whose sadness he had not noticed owing to his own absorption, he began to tell his secret in the darkness of the woods.