The bell rang for lunch.
It was silent, almost gloomy.
There was storm in the air, as the saying goes. Vast motionless clouds lay in wait on the horizon, silent and heavy, but loaded with tempest.
When they had taken their coffee on the veranda, the Marquise asked:
“Well, darling, are you going for a walk today with your friend Servigny? This is really the weather to enjoy the coolness of the woods.”
Yvette threw her a rapid glance, and swiftly looked away again.
“No, mother, I’m not going out today.”
The Marquise seemed disappointed.
“Do go for a little walk, child,” she persisted. “It’s so good for you.”
“No, mother,” said Yvette sharply, “I’m going to stay in the house, and you know quite well why, because I told you the other night.”
Madame Obardi had quite forgotten, consumed with her need to be alone with Saval. She blushed, fidgeted, and, distracted by her own desire, uncertain how to secure a free hour or two, stammered:
“Of course; I never thought of it. You’re quite right; I don’t know where my wits are wandering.”
Yvette took up a piece of embroidery which she called the “public welfare,” busying herself with it five or six times a year, on days of utter boredom, and seated herself on a low chair beside her mother. The young men sat in deck-chairs and smoked their cigars.
The hours went by in idle conversation that flagged continually. The Marquise threw impatient glances at Saval, seeking for an excuse, any way of getting rid of her daughter. Realising at last that she would not succeed, and not knowing what plan to adopt, she said to Servigny:
“You know, my dear Duc, that you’re both going to stay the night here. Tomorrow we are going to lunch at the restaurant Fournaise, at Chaton.”
He understood, smiled, and said with a bow:
“I am at your service, Marquise.”
Slowly the day wore on, slowly and uncomfortably, under the menace of the storm. Gradually the hour of dinner approached. The lowering sky was heavy with dull, sluggish clouds. They could not feel the least movement in the air.
The evening meal was eaten in silence. A sense of embarrassment and restraint, a sort of vague fear, silenced the two men and the two women.
When the table had been cleared, they remained on the veranda, speaking only at long intervals. Night was falling, a stifling night. Suddenly the horizon was torn by a great jagged flame that lit with its dazzling and pallid glare the four faces sunk in the shadows. Followed a distant noise, dull and faint, like the noise made by a cart crossing a bridge; the heat of the atmosphere increased, the air grew still more oppressive, the evening shadows more profound.
Yvette rose.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. “The storm makes me feel ill.”
She bent her forehead for the Marquise to kiss, offered her hand to the two young men, and departed.
As her room was directly above the veranda, the leaves of a large chestnut-tree planted in front of the door were soon gleaming with a green light. Servigny fixed his eyes on this pale gleam in the foliage, thinking now and then that he saw a shadow pass across it. But suddenly the light went out. Madame Obardi sighed.
“My daughter is in bed,” she said.
Servigny rose.
“I will follow your daughter’s example, Marquise, if you will allow me.”
He kissed her hand and disappeared in his turn.
She remained alone with Saval, in the darkness. At once she was in his arms, clasping him, embracing him. Then, though he tried to prevent it, she knelt down in front of him, murmuring: “I want to look at you in the lightning-flashes.”
But Yvette, her candle blown out, had come out on to her balcony, gliding barefooted like a shadow, and was listening, tortured by a painful and confused suspicion. She could not see, being exactly over their heads on the roof of the veranda. She heard nothing but a murmur of voices, and her heart beat so violently that the thudding of it filled her ears. A window shut overhead. So Servigny had just gone up to bed. Her mother was alone with the other.
A second flash split the sky, and for a second the whole familiar landscape was revealed in a vivid and sinister glare. She saw the great river, the colour of molten lead, like a river in some fantastic dream-country. At the same instant a voice below her said: “I love you.” She heard no more; strange shudder passed over her, her spirit was drowned in a fearful sea of trouble.
Silence, pressing, infinite, a silence that seemed the eternal silence of the grave, brooded over the world. She could not breathe, her lungs choked by some unknown and horrible weight. Another flash kindled the heavens and for an instant lit up the horizon, another followed on its heels, then another and another.
The voice she had already heard repeated more loudly: “Oh! How I love you! How I love you!” And Yvette knew the voice well; it was her mother’s.
A large drop of warm water fell upon her forehead, and a slight, almost imperceptible quiver ran through the leaves, the shiver of the coming rain.
Then a tumult came hurrying from far off, a confused tumult like the noise of the wind in trees; it was the heavy shower pouring in a torrent upon the earth, the river, and the trees. In a few moments the water was streaming all round her, covering her, splashing her, soaking her like a bath. She did not move, thinking only of what was happening on the veranda. She heard them rise and go up to their rooms. Doors slammed inside the house. And obeying an irresistible longing for certitude, a maddening, torturing desire, the young girl ran down the stairs, softly opened the outer door, ran across the lawn
