Then, frightened, she rose quickly, and without realising what she was doing, began to run.

In the grass her flying feet were very white and small.

The darkness of the evening had increased, and the Clos-Marie was a lake of shadow between the great trees on one side and the Cathedral on the other.

And on the ground the only visible light came from those same little feet, white and satiny as the wing of a dove.
Startled and afraid of the water, Angelique followed the bank of the Chevrotte, that she might cross it on a plank which served as a bridge.
But Felicien had gone a shorter way through the brambles and brushwood.
Until now he had always been overcome by his timidity, and he had turned redder than she as he saw her bare feet, pure and chaste as herself.
Now, in the overflow of his ignorant youth, passionately fond of beauty and desirous for love, he was impatient to cry out and tell her of the feeling which had entirely taken possession of him since he had first seen her.

But yet, when she brushed by him in her flight, he could only stammer, with a trembling voice, the acknowledgment so long delayed and which burnt his lips: "I love you." She stopped in surprise.