This dearly-loved retreat--so gay in the moonshine, so strangely thrilling in the gloom--seemed an inexhaustible source of both gaiety and silent emotion.

They would remain there until midnight, while the town dropped off to sleep and the lights in the windows of the Faubourg went out one by one.
They were never disturbed in their solitude.

At that late hour children were no longer playing at hide-and-seek behind the piles of planks.
Occasionally, when the young couple heard sounds in the distance--the singing of some workmen as they passed along the road, or conversation coming from the neighbouring sidewalks--they would cast stealthy glances over the Aire Saint-Mittre.

The timber-yard stretched out, empty of all, save here and there some falling shadows.

On warm evenings they sometimes caught glimpses of loving couples there, and of old men sitting on the big beams by the roadside.