The woods were still.
Save for a swarm of gnats which hummed in a minor key around the sleeping Lampron, nothing stirred, not a leaf even.

All nature was silent as it drank in the full sunshine.
A murmur of distant voices stole on my ear.

I rose, and crept through the birches and hazels to the edge of the glade.
At the top of the slope, on the green margin of the glade, shaded by the tall trees, two pedestrians were slowly advancing.

At the distance they still were I could distinguish very little except that the man wore a frock-coat, and that the girl was dressed in gray, and was young, to judge by the suppleness of her walk.

Nevertheless I felt at once that it was she! I hid at they came near, and saw her pass on her father's arm, chatting in low tones, full of joy to have escaped from the Rue de l'Universite.
She was looking before her with wide-open eyes.