It was a delicious retreat, this old quincunx of plane trees, another
remnant of the past splendor of La Souleiade. Under these giant trees,
with their monstrous trunks, there was only a dim light, a greenish
light, exquisitely cool, even on the hottest days of summer. Formerly
a French garden had been laid out here, of which only the box borders
remained; bushes which had habituated themselves to the shade, no
doubt, for they grew vigorously, as tall as trees. And the charm of
this shady nook was a fountain, a simple leaden pipe fixed in the
shaft of a column; whence flowed perpetually, even in the greatest
drought, a thread of water as thick as the little finger, which
supplied a large mossy basin, the greenish stones of which were
cleaned only once in three or four years. When all the wells of the
neighborhood were dry, La Souleiade still kept its spring, of which
the great plane trees were assuredly the secular children. Night and
day for centuries past this slender thread of water, unvarying and
continuous, had sung the same pure song with crystal sound.

Clotilde, after wandering awhile among the bushes of box, which
reached to her shoulder, went back to the house for a piece of
embroidery, and returning with it, sat down at a stone table beside
the fountain. Some garden chairs had been placed around it, and they
often took coffee here. And after this she affected not to look up
again from her work, as if she was completely absorbed in it. Now and
then, while seeming to look between the trunks of trees toward the
sultry distance, toward the yard, on which the sun blazed fiercely and
which glowed like a brazier, she stole a glance from under her long
lashes up to the doctor's windows. Nothing appeared, not a shadow. And
a feeling of sadness, of resentment, arose within her at this neglect,
this contempt in which he seemed to hold her after their quarrel of
the day before. She who had got up with so great a desire to make