It was delightful to feel the cold breath of the well on one's face, and make love amidst this spring water while the skies were kindling their fires.

Miette would arrive out of breath after crossing the stubble fields; as she ran along, her hair fell down over her forehead and temples; and it was with flushed face and dishevelled locks that she would lean over, shaking with laughter, almost before she had had time to set her pitcher down.

Silvere, who was almost always the first at the well, felt, as he suddenly saw her smiling face in the water, as keen a joy as he would have experienced had she suddenly thrown herself into his arms at the bend of a pathway.
Around them the radiant morning hummed with mirth; a wave of warm light, sonorous with the buzzing of insects, beat against the old wall, the posts, and the curbstone.

They, however, no longer saw the shower of morning sunshine, nor heard the thousand sounds rising from the ground; they were in the depths of their green hiding-place, under the earth, in that mysterious and awesome cavity, and quivered with pleasure as they lingered there enjoying its fresh coolness and dim light.
On some mornings, Miette, who by nature could not long maintain a contemplative attitude, began to tease; she would shake the rope, and make drops of water fall in order to ripple the mirrors and deface the reflections.

Silvere would then entreat her to remain still; he, whose fervour was deeper than hers, knew no keener pleasure than that of gazing at his love's image reflected so distinctly in every feature.
But she would not listen to him; she would joke and feign a rough old bogey's voice, to which the echo imparted a raucous melodiousness.
"No, no," she would say in chiding fashion; "I don't love you to-day! I'm making faces at you; see how ugly I am." And she laughed at seeing the fantastic forms which their spreading faces assumed as they danced upon the disturbed water.
One morning she got angry in real earnest.