"Please tell me."

"That I could love you."

"Pierre--"

"Yes."

"My name is Mary Brown."

He repeated several times: "Mary."

"And if I were a grown-up girl, do you know what I would answer?"

"I don't dare guess it."

"That I could love you, Pierre, if you were a grown-up man."

"But I am."

"Not a really one."

And they both broke into laughter--laughter that died out before a
sound of rushing and of thunder, as a mass slid swiftly past them,
snow and mud and sand and rubble. The wind fell away from them, and
when Pierre looked up he saw that a great mass of tumbled rock and
soil loomed above them.

The landslide had not touched them, by some miracle, but in a moment