evening.”

“But I am not going to leave you to-day. I can’t leave you. I am frightened that you may not come. I am frightened that I may lose you, Maria.”

“Just as we fled the first time, then,” she murmured, in a mysterious, dreamy ecstasy.

“As the first time, darling.”

And the old times reappeared to them, just as the voices reappeared, just as the words reappeared; time was annulled, and everything was as at first. They asked nothing of their souls, of their hearts, since the looks, the voices, and the gestures were as at first; in the unrestrained tumult of resumed passion their souls and their hearts kept silence, in their profound, singular, and obscure silence.