Then the young people would slip quietly away, as merry as truants from school.

They wandered beneath the shade of the giant oaks, or climbed the rocks that stood by the river bank.

Sometimes, seated in a dilapidated boat, they would drift down the stream with its flower-bedecked banks.

The water was often almost covered with rushes and water lilies.

Two months of enchantment thus fled past, two months of the intoxications of love, though the mention of the tender passion never rose to their lips from their hearts, where it was deeply imbedded.