“Good eating!” And was for going on his road. But she called to him:
“Sir! Sir! Will you be very nice? Help me to get down. I can’t. …”
He returned and asked her how she had climbed up.
“With my hands and feet. … It is easy enough to get up. …”
“Especially when there are tempting plums hanging above your head. …”
“Yes. … But when you have eaten your courage goes. You can’t find the way to get down.”
He looked at her on her perch. He said:
“You are all right there. Stay there quietly. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Good night!”
But he did not budge, and stood beneath her. She pretended to be afraid, and begged him with little glances not to leave her. They stayed looking at each other and laughing. She showed him the branch to which she was clinging and asked:
“Would you like some?”
Respect for property had not developed in Christophe since the days of his expeditions with Otto: he accepted without hesitation. She amused herself with pelting him with plums. When he had eaten she said:
“Now! …”
He took a wicked pleasure in keeping her waiting. She grew impatient on her wall. At last he said:
“Come, then!” and held his hand up to her.
But just as she was about to jump down she thought a moment.
“Wait! We must make provision first!”
She gathered the finest plums within reach and filled the front of her blouse with them.
“Carefully! Don’t crush them!”
He felt almost inclined to do so.
She lowered herself from the wall and jumped into his arms. Although he was sturdy he bent under her weight and all but dragged her down. They were of the same height. Their faces came together. He kissed her lips, moist and sweet with the juice of the plums: and she returned his kiss without more ceremony.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you out alone?”
“No. I am with friends. But I have lost them. … Hi! Hi!” she called suddenly as loudly as she could.
No answer.
She did not bother about it anymore. They began to walk, at random, following their noses.
“And you … where are you going?” said she.
“I don’t know, either.”
“Good. We’ll go together.”
She took some plums from her gaping blouse and began to munch them.
“You’ll make yourself sick,” he said.
“Not I! I’ve been eating them all day.”
Through the gap in her blouse he saw the white of her chemise.
“They are all warm now,” she said.
“Let me see!”
She held him one and laughed. He ate it. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she sucked at the fruit like a child. He did not know how the adventure would end. It is probable that she at least had some suspicion. She waited.
“Hi! Hi!” Voices in the woods.
“Hi! Hi!” she answered. “Ah! There they are!” she said to Christophe. “Not a bad thing, either!”
But on the contrary she was thinking that it was rather a pity. But speech was not given to woman for her to say what she is thinking. … Thank God! for there would be an end of morality on earth. …
The voices came near. Her friends were near the road. She leaped the ditch, climbed the hedge, and hid behind the trees. He watched her in amazement. She signed to him imperiously to come to her. He followed her. She plunged into the depths of the wood.
“Hi! Hi!” she called once more when they had gone some distance. “You see, they must look for me!” she explained to Christophe.
Her friends had stopped on the road and were listening for her voice to mark where it came from. They answered her and in their turn entered the woods. But she did not wait for them. She turned about on right and on left. They bawled loudly after her. She let them, and then went and called in the opposite direction. At last they wearied of it, and, making sure that the best way of making her come was to give up seeking her, they called:
“Goodbye!” and went off singing.
She was furious that they should not have bothered about her any more than that. She had tried to be rid of them: but she had not counted on their going off so easily. Christophe looked rather foolish: this game of hide-and-seek with a girl whom he did not know did not exactly enthrall him: and he had no thought of taking advantage of their solitude. Nor did she think of it: in her annoyance she forgot Christophe.
“Oh! It’s too much,” she said, thumping her hands together. “They have left me.”
“But,” said Christophe, “you wanted them to.”
“Not at all.”
“You ran away.”
“If I ran away from them that is my affair, not theirs. They ought to look for me. What if I were lost? …”
Already she was beginning to be sorry for herself because of what might have happened if … if the opposite of what actually had occurred had come about.
“Oh!” she said. “I’ll shake them!” She turned back and strode off.
As she went she remembered Christophe and looked at him once more.—But it was too late. She began to laugh. The little demon which had been in her the moment before was gone. While she was waiting for another to come she saw Christophe with the eyes of indifference. And then, she was hungry. Her stomach was reminding her that it was suppertime: she was in a hurry to rejoin her friends at the inn. She took Christophe’s arm, leaned on it with all her weight, groaned, and said that she was exhausted. That did not keep her from dragging Christophe down a slope, running, and shouting, and laughing like a mad thing.
They talked. She learned who he
