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.




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