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Then I heard one of them stammer and say sadly, with almost a sob: "We love each other dearly." Then a tender phrase rose breathlessly, groping for words, timidly, like a bird just learning to fly: "I'd like to love you more." To see them thus bent toward each other, in the warm shadow, which bathed them and veiled the childishness of their features, you would have thought them two lovers meeting.
Two lovers! That was their dream, though they did not yet know what love meant.
One of them had said "the first time." It was the time that they felt they were alone, although these two cousins had been living close together.
No doubt it was the first time that the two had sought to leave friendship and childhood behind them.

It was the first time that desire had come to surprise and trouble two hearts, which until now had slept.
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