They mutually promised that they would pray for each other, and so absorbed in each other did they become that they forgot themselves, with such an ardent desire for one another's cure and happiness, that for a moment they attained to the depths of the love which offers itself in sacrifice.

It was divine enjoyment.
"Ah!" murmured Pierre, "how beautiful is this blue night, this infinite darkness, which has swept away all the hideousness of things and beings, this deep, fresh peacefulness, in which I myself should like to bury my doubts!" His voice died away, and Marie, in her turn, said in a very low voice: "And the roses, the perfume of the roses?
Can't you smell them, my friend?
Where can they be since you could not see them ?" "Yes, yes, I smell them, but there are none," he replied.

"I should certainly have seen them, for I hunted everywhere." "How can you say that there are no roses when they perfume the air around us, when we are steeped in their aroma?
Why, there are moments when the scent is so powerful that I almost faint with delight in inhaling it! They must certainly be here, innumerable, under our very feet." "No, no," said Pierre, "I swear to you I hunted everywhere, and there are no roses.

They must be invisible, or they may be the very grass we tread and the spreading trees that are around us; their perfume may come from the soil itself, from the torrent which flows along close by, from the woods and the mountains that rise yonder." For a moment they remained silent.

Then, in an undertone, she resumed: "How sweet they smell, Pierre! And it seems to me that even our clasped hands form a bouquet." "Yes, they smell delightfully sweet; but it is from you, Marie, that the perfume now ascends, as though the roses were budding from your hair." Then they ceased speaking.