Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms.
She recoiled trembling. She stammered:
“Oh, you frighten me!
You hurt me!
Let me go!”
“If it must be,” he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid.
She gave him her arm.
They went back.
He said— “What was the matter with you? Why?
I do not understand.
You were mistaken, no doubt.
In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate.
But I need you to live!
I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought!
Be my friend, my sister, my angel!”
And he put out his arm round her waist.
She feebly tried to disengage herself.
He supported her thus as they walked along.
But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
“Oh! one moment!” said Rodolphe. “Do not let us go!
Stay!”
He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water.
Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds.
At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.
“I am wrong!
I am wrong!” she said. “I am mad to listen to you!”
“Why?
Emma!
Emma!”
“Oh, Rodolphe!” said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.
The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat.
She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him—
The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes.
Here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers.
Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk.
Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves.
Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles.
They returned to Yonville by the same road.
On the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places.
Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it.
She was charming on horseback—upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening.
On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road.
People looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.
“Emma!” he said.
“What?”
“Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre’s.
He has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns.”
He added, “And thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it—bought it. Have I done right?
Do tell me?”