She was trembling, leaning on his arm, her eyes lowered and her cheeks pale.
“You must make no mistake about me,” she continued. “I’m an honest girl, and I won’t come with you unless you promise, unless you’ll swear not to … not to do anything which isn’t … which isn’t … nice.”
She had suddenly gone more scarlet than a poppy. She was silent. He did not know what to reply, happy and disappointed at the same time. At the bottom of his heart he possibly preferred that it should be like this; yet … yet he had lulled himself to sleep, the night before, with dreams that had fired his pulses. Certainly he would have loved her less, had he known her to be of easy virtue; but then how charming, how delicious it would be for him if she were! His mind was racked by all the selfish calculations that men make over this business of love.
As he said nothing, she added in a voice shaken with emotion, and tears at the corners of her eyes:
“If you don’t promise to respect me, absolutely … I’m going back home.”
He squeezed her arm affectionately and replied:
“I promise; you shall do nothing you do not want to do.”
She seemed relieved, and asked with a smile:
“Is that really true?”
He looked into the depths of her eyes.
“I swear it!”
“Then let’s take the tickets,” she said.
They could hardly speak a word to one another on the way, as their compartment was full.
Having reached Maisons-Laffitte, they directed their steps towards the Seine.
The warm air quieted their thoughts and their senses. The sun fell full upon the river, the leaves, and the grass, and darted a thousand gleams of happiness into body and mind. Hand in hand they walked along the bank, watching the little fish that glided in shoals under the surface of the water. They wandered along, adrift in happiness, as though transported from the earth in an ecstasy of delight.
At last she said:
“You must think me mad.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Isn’t it mad of me to go all alone with you like this?” she went on.
“Why, no; it’s quite natural.”
“No, no! It’s not natural—for me—for I don’t want to do anything foolish—and this is just how one does come to do foolish things. But if you only knew! It’s so dull, every day the same thing, every day in the month and every month in the year. I live alone with my mother. And since she has had many sorrows in her life, she’s not very gay. As for me, I do what I can. I try to laugh, but I don’t always succeed. But all the same, it was wrong of me to come. But at least you don’t blame me for it?”
For answer he kissed her eagerly upon the ear. But she drew away from him with a swift movement, and said, suddenly vexed:
“Oh, Monsieur François, after what you promised me!”
And they turned back towards Maisons-Laffitte.
They lunched at the Petit-Havre, a low house buried beneath four enormous poplars, and standing on the bank of the river.
The fresh air, the heat, the thin white wine, and the exciting sense of each other’s nearness made them flushed, troubled and silent. But after coffee, a sudden tide of joy welled up in them; they crossed the Seine and set off again along the bank towards the village of La Frette.
Suddenly he asked:
“What is your name?”
“Louise.”
“Louise,” he repeated, and said no more.
The river, describing a long curve, caressed a distant row of white houses mirrored head downwards in the water. The girl picked daisies and arranged them in a huge rustic sheaf; the man sang at the top of his voice, as lively as a colt just put out to grass.
To the left, a slope planted with vines followed the curve of the river. Suddenly François stopped and remained motionless with astonishment.
“Oh, look!” he said.
The vineyards had ceased, and all the hillside was now covered with flowering lilac. It was a violet-hued wood, a carpet spread upon the earth, reaching as far as the village two or three kilometres distant.
She too stood spellbound with delight.
“Oh! How lovely!” she murmured.
They crossed a field and ran towards this strange hill which every year supplies all the lilac trundled about Paris on the little barrows of the street sellers.
A narrow path lost itself among the shrubs. They took it, and, coming to a small clearing, there sat down.
Legions of flies murmured above their heads, filling the air with a soft, ceaseless drone. The sun, the fierce sun of an airless day, beat down upon the long slope of blossom, drawing from this flower-forest a powerful scent, great heady gusts of perfume, the exhalation of the flowers.
A church-bell rang in the distance.
Quietly they embraced, then drew each other closer, lying in the grass, conscious of nothing but their kisses. She had closed her eyes and held him in her open arms, clasping him tightly, all thought dismissed, all reason abandoned, every sense utterly suspended in passionate expectation. She gave herself utterly to him, without knowing what she was doing, without even realising that she was delivered into his hands.
She came to herself half mad, as from a dreadful disaster, and began to weep, moaning with grief, hiding her face in her hands.
He tried to console her. But she was anxious to leave, to get back, to go home at once. She walked up and down with desperate strides, ceaselessly repeating:
“My God! My God!”
“Louise,” he begged. “Please stay, Louise.”
Her cheeks were now burning and her eyes sunken. As soon as they arrived at the station in Paris, she left him without even bidding him goodbye.
When he met her next day in the omnibus, she seemed to him to have changed, to have grown thinner.
“I must speak to you,” she said to him. “We will get off at the boulevard.”
When they were alone on the pavement she said:
“We must say goodbye to one another. I cannot see you again after what has happened.”
“But why not?” he
