And they stayed there, she inside, he outside, their arms laced, their heads touching each other, the cheek of one resting on the cheek of the other.
When the weather was beautiful, she jumped over this low window-sill to wait for him outside, and their long meetings, almost without words, occurred on the garden bench.

Between them there were not even those continual whisperings familiar to lovers; no, there were rather silences.

At first they did not dare to talk, for fear of being discovered, for the least murmurs of voices at night are heard.

And then, as nothing new threatened their lives, what need had they to talk?
What could they have said which would have been better than the long contact of their joined hands and of their heads resting against each other?
The possibility of being surprised kept them often on the alert, in an anxiety which made more delicious afterward the moments when they forgot themselves more, their confidence having returned .-- Nobody frightened them as much as Arrochkoa, a smart, nocturnal prowler himself, and always so well-informed about the goings and comings of Ramuntcho--In spite of his indulgence, what would he do, if he discovered them ?-- Oh, the old stone benches, under branches, in front of the doors of isolated houses, when fall the lukewarm nights of spring!--Theirs was a real lovers' hiding place, and there was for them, every night, a music, for, in all the stones of the neighbors' wall lived those singing tree-toads, beasts of the south, which, as soon as night fell, gave from moment to moment a little, brief note, discreet, odd, having the tone of a crystal bell and of a child's throat.

Something similar might be produced by touching here and there, without ever resting on them, the scales of an organ with a celestial voice.