“Yes, joyfully—why attempt to conceal it? I told myself that I was going to execute my father’s last command, that he was looking down upon me with approving eyes. So I was very happy.”
“You have forgotten another reason for that happiness, have you not, monsieur?”
“Another reason?”
“You have said nothing of the lady.”
“Really, mademoiselle,” I said in some confusion, “I fear I scarcely thought of her. I was only a boy. I had never been out into the world. All women were the same to me.”
“You mean they are no longer so?” she asked, and again I saw her eyes gleaming up at me from the shadow.
“So little so, mademoiselle,” I answered hoarsely, “that I am longing to throw myself into the war in La Vendée in the hope that a kindly bullet will deliver me from the fate prepared for me. Death, it seems to me, is preferable to that a thousand times.”
“Come, monsieur,” she protested lightly, “you exaggerate. Indeed, I can assure you that a month from now you will again find life very tolerable.”
“Why a month from now?”
“Because in that time you will be married, you will have become accustomed to your wife, your heart will have opened to her, and you will have forgotten the mood of this evening—or if you recall it, it will be with a smile of amusement, as at a boyish folly.”