The thought leaped. “And this sublime folly—this madness—was for me?”
It stirred and intoxicated him. Yet she was not thereby raised in his eyes. Nay, the contrary. With the passion which was rapidly mounting in his veins there mingled—poor Julie!—a curious diminution of respect.
“Julie!” He held out his hand to her peremptorily. “Come to me again. You are so wonderful tonight, in that white dress—like a wild muse. I shall always see you so. Come!”
She obeyed, and gave him her hands, standing beside his chair. But her face was still absorbed.
“To be free,” she said, under her breath—“free, like my parents, from all these petty struggles and conventions!”
Then she felt his kisses on her hands, and her expression changed.
“How we cheat ourselves with words!” she whispered, trembling, and, withdrawing one hand, she smoothed back the light-brown curls from his brow with that protecting tenderness which had always entered into her love for him. “Tonight we are here—together—this one last night! And tomorrow, at this time, you’ll be in Paris; perhaps you’ll be looking out at the lights—and the crowds on the Boulevard—and the chestnut-trees. They’ll just be in their first leaf—I know so well!—and the little thin leaves will be shining so green under the lamps—and I shall be here—and it will be all over and done with—forever. What will it matter whether I am free or not free? I shall be alone! That’s all a woman knows.”
Her voice died away. Warkworth rose. He put his arms round her, and she did not resist.
“Julie,” he said in her ear, “why should you be alone?”
A silence fell between them.
“I—I don’t understand,” she said, at last.
“Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after tomorrow? What harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn in the valley of the Bièvre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field. No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two—but this is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn’t we spend our last two days there—together—away from all the world, before we say goodbye? You’ve been afraid here of prying people—of the Duchess even—of Madame Bornier—how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn’t we sweep all that away—and be happy! Nobody should ever—nobody could ever know.” His voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. “We might go as brother and sister—that would be quite simple. You are practically French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrières close by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away. But I knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days—wandering in the woods—together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels, and I go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have been ours!”
At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself. Pushing him from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb amazement. The color first deserted her face, then returned in a flood.
“So you despise me?” she said, catching her breath.
“No. I adore you.”
She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside her, arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her, talking very fast and low, defending and developing the scheme, till it stood before them complete and tempting in all its details.
Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth, full of tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the window again in a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh leaves and moistened earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath the window. The scent, the branching trees, the wide, mild spaces of air brought relief. He leaned out, bathing his brow in the night. A tumult of voices seemed to be echoing through his mind, dominated by one which held the rest defiantly in check.
“Is she a mere girl, to be ‘led astray’? A moment of happiness—what harm?—for either of us?”
Then he returned to Julie.
“Julie!” He touched her shoulder, trembling. Had she banished him forever? It seemed to him that in these minutes he had passed through an infinity of experience. Was he not the nobler, the more truly man? Let the moralists talk.
“Julie!” he repeated, in an anguish.
She raised her head, and he saw that she had been crying. But there was in her face a light, a wildness, a yearning that reassured him. She put her arm round him and pressed her cheek to his. He divined that she, too, had lived and felt a thousand hours in one. With a glow of ecstatic joy he began to talk to her again, her head resting on his shoulder, her slender hands crushed in his.
And Julie, meanwhile, was saying to herself, “Either I go to him, as he asks, or in a few minutes I must send him away—forever.”
And then as she clung to him, so warm and near, her strength failed her. Nothing in the world mattered to her at that moment but this handsome, curly head bowed upon her own, this
