And then there was sweet peace again. The night was calm once more, and they returned to their inward thoughts. Sabine rocked slowly in her chair, dreaming. Christophe also was dreaming. They said nothing. After half an hour Christophe began to talk to himself, and in a low voice cried out with pleasure in the delicious scent brought by the soft wind that came from a cart of strawberries. Sabine said a word or two in reply. Again they were silent. They were enjoying the charm of these indefinite silences, and trivial words. Their dreams were the same, they had but one thought: they did not know what it was: they did not admit it to themselves. At eleven they smiled and parted.
Next day they did not even try to talk: they resumed their sweet silence. At long intervals a word or two let them know that they were thinking of the same things.
Sabine began to laugh.
“How much better it is,” she said, “not to try to talk! One thinks one must, and it is so tiresome!”
“Ah!” said Christophe with conviction, “if only everybody thought the same.”
They both laughed. They were thinking of Frau Vogel.
“Poor woman!” said Sabine; “how exhausting she is!”
“She is never exhausted,” replied Christophe gloomily.
She was tickled by his manner and his jest.
“You think it amusing?” he asked. “That is easy for you. You are sheltered.”
“So I am,” said Sabine. “I lock myself in.” She had a little soft laugh that hardly sounded. Christophe heard it with delight in the calm of the evening. He snuffed the fresh air luxuriously.
“Ah! It is good to be silent!” he said, stretching his limbs.
“And talking is no use!” said she.
“Yes,” returned Christophe, “we understand each other so well!”
They relapsed into silence. In the darkness they could not see each other. They were both smiling.
And yet, though they felt the same, when they were together—or imagined that they did—in reality they knew nothing of each other. Sabine did not bother about it. Christophe was more curious. One evening he asked her:
“Do you like music?”
“No,” she said simply. “It bores me, I don’t understand it.”
Her frankness charmed him. He was sick of the lies of people who said that they were mad about music, and were bored to death when they heard it: and it seemed to him almost a virtue not to like it and to say so. He asked if Sabine read.
“No. She had no books.”
He offered to lend her his.
“Serious books?” she asked uneasily.
“Not serious books if she did not want them. Poetry.”
“But those are serious books.”
“Novels, then.”
She pouted.
“They don’t interest you?”
“Yes. She was interested in them: but they were always too long: she never had the patience to finish them. She forgot the beginning: skipped chapters and then lost the thread. And then she threw the book away.”
“Fine interest you take!”
“Bah! Enough for a story that is not true. She kept her interest for better things than books.”
“For the theater, then?”
“No. … No.”
“Didn’t she go to the theater?”
“No. It was too hot. There were too many people. So much better at home. The lights tired her eyes. And the actors were so ugly!”
He agreed with her in that. But there were other things in the theater: the play, for instance.
“Yes,” she said absently. “But I have no time.”
“What do you do all day?”
She smiled.
“There is so much to do.”
“True,” said he. “There is your shop.”
“Oh!” she said calmly. “That does not take much time.”
“Your little girl takes up your time then?”
“Oh! no, poor child! She is very good and plays by herself.”
“Then?”
He begged pardon for his indiscretion. But she was amused by it.
“There are so many things.”
“What things?”
“She could not say. All sorts of things. Getting up, dressing, thinking of dinner, cooking dinner, eating dinner, thinking of supper, cleaning her room. … And then the day was over. … And besides you must have a little time for doing nothing!”
“And you are not bored?”
“Never.”
“Even when you are doing nothing?”
“Especially when I am doing nothing. It is much worse doing something: that bores me.”
They looked at each other and laughed.
“You are very happy!” said Christophe. “I can’t do nothing.”
“It seems to me that you know how.”
“I have been learning lately.”
“Ah! well, you’ll learn.”
When he left off talking to her he was at his ease and comfortable. It was enough for him to see her. He was rid of his anxieties, and irritations, and the nervous trouble that made him sick at heart. When he was talking to her he was beyond care: and so when he thought of her. He dared not admit it to himself: but as soon as he was in her presence, he was filled with a delicious soft emotion that brought him almost to unconsciousness. At night he slept as he had never done.
When he came back from his work he would look into this shop. It was not often that he did not see Sabine. They bowed and smiled. Sometimes she was at the door and then they would exchange a few words: and he would open the door and call the little girl and hand her a packet of sweets.
One day he decided to go in. He pretended that he wanted some
