“Have no fears about that,” said Servigny. “I’m not a fool, nor an emperor. One has to be one or the other to lose one’s head so completely. But, I say, are you sleepy?”
“Not a bit.”
“Come for a walk along the riverside, then.”
“Very well.”
They opened the gate and started off down the river towards Marly.
It was the cool hour just before dawn, the hour of deepest sleep, deepest rest, utter quiet. Even the faint noises of the night were silent now. The nightingales sang no longer, the frogs had finished their croaking; some unknown animal, a bird perhaps, alone broke the stillness, making a feeble sawing noise, monotonous and regular, like the working of a machine. Servigny, who had at times a touch of the poet and of the philosopher too, said abruptly:
“Look here. This girl absolutely maddens me. In arithmetic, one and one make two. In love, one and one ought to make one, but they make two all the same. Do you know the feeling? The savage need of absorbing a woman into oneself, or of being absorbed into her? I don’t mean the mere physical desire to embrace her, but the mental and spiritual torment to be at one with another human being, to open one’s whole soul to her, one’s whole heart, and to penetrate to the uttermost depths of her mind. And never, never do you really know her or discover all the fluctuations of her will, her desires, and her thoughts. Never can you make even the slightest guess at the whole of the secret, the whole mystery of the spirit come so close to you, a spirit hidden behind two eyes as clear as water, as transparent as though there were no secret behind them. A spirit speaks to you through a beloved mouth, a mouth that seems yours because you desire it so passionately; one by one this spirit sends you its thoughts in the guise of words, and yet it remains farther from you than the stars are from one another, farther out of reach than the stars. Strange, isn’t it!”
“I do not demand so much,” replied Saval. “I do not bother to look behind the eyes. I don’t care much for the inside; it’s the outside I care for.”
“Whatever you say, Yvette’s a queer creature,” murmured Servigny. “I wonder how she’ll treat me in the morning.”
As they reached the weir at Marly, they saw that the sky was paling. Cocks began to crow in the farmyards; the sound reached them slightly muffled by thick walls. A bird cried in a park on the left, continually repeating a simple and ridiculous little cadenza.
“Time to go back,” said Saval, and they turned round.
When Servigny reached his room, the horizon gleamed rosily through the still open window. He pulled down the Venetian blinds and drew the heavy curtains across, got into bed, and at last fell asleep. And all the time he dreamt of Yvette.
A curious sound awoke him. He sat up and listened, but did not hear it again. Then suddenly there came against his shutters a rattling like hail. He jumped out of bed and ran to the window; throwing it open, he saw Yvette standing on the garden-path, throwing great handfuls of gravel in his face.
She was dressed in pink, and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat surmounted with a military plume; she was laughing with malicious mischief.
“Well, Muscade, still asleep? What can you have been doing last night to wake up so late? Did you have any adventures, my poor Muscade?”
“Coming, coming, Mam’zelle! Just a moment, while I stick my nose into the water-jug, and I’ll be down.”
“Hurry up,” she cried; “it’s ten o’clock. And I’ve got a scheme to talk over with you, a plot we are going to carry out. Breakfast at eleven, you know.”
He found her seated on a bench with a book on her knees, a novel. She took his arm with friendly familiarity, as frankly and gaily as though nothing had happened the night before, and leading him to the far end of the garden, said:
“This is my plan. We’re going to disobey mamma, and you are going to take me presently to the Grenouillère. I want to see it. Mamma says that decent women can’t go there, but I don’t care whether I can or I can’t. You’ll take me, Muscade, won’t you? We’ll have such sport with the people on the river.”
The fragrance of her was delightful, but he could not discover what vague, faint scent it was that hung round her. It was not one of her mother’s heavy perfumes, but a delicate fragrance in which he thought he recognised a faint whiff of iris powder and perhaps a touch of verbena.
Whence came this elusive scent—from her dress, her hair, or her skin? He was wondering about this when, as she spoke with her face very close to his, he felt her fresh breath full in his face, and found it quite as delightful. He fancied that the fleeting fragrance he had failed to recognise was the figment of his own bewitched senses, nothing but a delusive emanation from her youth and alluring grace.
“You will, won’t you, Muscade?” she said. “It will be so hot after breakfast that mother won’t want to go out. She’s very lazy when it’s hot. We’ll leave her with your friend, and you shall be my escort. We’ll pretend we are going up to the woods. You don’t know how I shall enjoy seeing the Grenouillère.”
They reached the gate facing the Seine. A flood of sunlight fell on the quiet, gleaming river. A light heat-mist was lifting, the steam of evaporated water, leaving a little glittering vapour on the surface of the stream. From time to time a boat went by, a light skiff or a heavy barge, and distant whistles could be heard, the short notes of the whistles on the Sunday trains that flooded the
