Page:Pierre and Luce.djvu/115

Rh head on Luce's knees in the hollow of her skirt like a child who goes to sleep with its face close couched against the warmth of the stomach. And Luce without a word caressed with her hands the ears and eyes, the nose and lips of her beloved one. Dear spiritual hands which seemed, as in the tales about fairies, to have little mouths at the finger-tips! And Pierre, a thinking piano, divined the meaning of the little waves that sped under the tips, the emotions that passed through the soul of his darling. He heard her sigh before she had begun to sigh. Luce had raised herself with her body leaning forward and, with breathing oppressed, she moaned in a whisper:

"Pierre, oh, Pierre!"

Pierre looked at her troubled.

"Oh, Pierre! What are we, anyway? . . . What is it they want of us? . . . What do we want? . . . What is this going on within us? These guns, these birds, this war, this love. . . . These hands, body, eyes. . . . Where am I? . . . and what am I?"

Pierre, who did not recognize this