Smile then, if you wish, when I say that I loved her!
XI
So then, it was twilight, just after sunset on a raw, foggy, rainy day, the 21st of December, 1908—my last day of life. And around me was the hill of the strangely significant name: Le col de la Mort de Gauthier! A cry of terror had escaped me:
“Madeleine!”
It was she—Madeleine, the girl I loved, alone, afoot, on that deserted heath, on that raw, foggy, rainy, wintry evening—Madeleine, hurrying along that solitary trail through the sweet-fern and the cat-briar, in her afternoon costume, as she would dress for a tea at a fashionable hotel ... and twenty miles from home!
“Madeleine!” I called. And she seemed not to hear me, and not to see me; but hurried on, on, on, rapidly, with unerring step, over that rough and broken and rain-soaked ground.
My heart stopped beating. For ten, fifteen, twenty seconds I stood there paralyzed, rooted to the trail. Then I came to myself; and in a mad dash down the incline, I went off in pursuit of her.