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PIERRE AND LUCE
37

"Like mine."

"Well, yes, so far as clear goes they are."

"That's because they're looking at Luce."

"Luce? . . . People say 'Mademoiselle.'"

"No."

"No?"

(He shook his head.)

"You are not 'Mademoiselle.' You are just Luce and I am Pierre."

They were holding hands; and without looking at one another, their eyes fixed upon the tender blue of the sky between the branches of the leafless trees, they kept silence. The flood of their thoughts intermingled by way of their hands.

She said:

"The other night both of us were afraid."

"Yes," said he, "how good it was."

(Only later they smiled at having expressed, each one, what the other was dreaming of.)

She tore her hand away and suddenly sprang up, having heard the clock strike.