replaced, the door was reclosed. The children remained alone.

From without, a voice, the voice of Ursus, said,--

You, boy, who have just eaten up my supper, are you already asleep?"

No," replied the child.

Well, if she cries, give her the rest of the milk."

The clinking of a chain being undone was heard, and the sound of a man's

footsteps, mingled with that of the pads of an animal, died off in the

distance. A few minutes after, both children slept profoundly.

The little boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through

the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such

dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other;

beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the

word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband

and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence in such

darkness, such purity in such an embrace; such foretastes of heaven are

possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of

little children. Of all gulfs this is the deepest. The fearful

perpetuity of the dead chained beyond life, the mighty animosity of the

ocean to a wreck, the whiteness of the snow over buried bodies, do not

equal in pathos two children's mouths meeting divinely in sleep,[10] and

the meeting of which is not even a kiss. A betrothal perchance,

265

The Man Who Laughs