But Louis, springing after him, caught him by the arm. “Gilbert . . . for God’s sake, don’t go like that . . . You can’t mean it! You——”
Somehow, without actually shaking him off, Gilbert succeeded in disengaging himself. “Surely,” he said bitingly, “you are not usually so dull. I cannot stay here all evening to repeat the same thing. Lucienne is yours—if she will have you. Is not that plain enough?”
Their eyes met. Then something more like horror than any other emotion dawned in the Vicomte’s, and with a catch of the breath he recoiled a little. The Marquis went quickly out and shut the door behind him.
He set his face towards the miles of rough upland behind the inn. He must walk—he must walk for ever to get away. A fine soaking rain was beginning to fall; he did not feel it. Past the few bitten oaks that fringed the garden he strode, and up the vacillating track that ceased at last, disheartened, on the shaggy hillside. Where was the balm which the priest had promised him? “Liar! liar!” he said between his teeth. He had done it; he had wrenched his heart out, and where was the difference? . . . He walked, equally oblivious of time and of distance; of the rain and of the broken hilly ground, stumbling over gorse bushes, catching his feet in rabbit holes. At last, almost at the top of a hill, he came to a stop, not knowing or caring where he had got to, and threw himself down on his face in the wet grass.
It was night indeed in his heart. All was gone; Lucienne’s love—though that, he knew, he had lost long ago—and that fierce and steadfast determination to keep her in spite of everything, which had sustained him for months. When he had lost his hold on that he was indeed beaten to his knees by that force stronger than himself, whatever it was, which had conquered his own stubborn will and smitten to the earth his pride. The sense of loss, of shock, was at once more and less than pain; it was numbing, grinding, annihilating. . . . Of Lucienne, as desirable, loved and beautiful, cast from him by his own act, he hardly thought at all. The act itself had cost him too much.
He lay there long motionless, careless of the rain, of the deepening darkness, of the passage of time. The smell and touch of the friendly little blades of grass against his face and mouth began first to recall him to external things. They were life, and he, too, had to live—with nothing left to live for. . . . Yes, one thing! If only the moment would come soon, soon!
He stirred and sat up. The rain was ceasing; one or two stars were visible, hanging over a dark mass which stood out against the sky a little above where he lay, and which must be the wood on the top of the hill of La Chapelle-Michel. It was a surprise to find how far he had come. Dully, mechanically, he thought that he must get back, and that he was very cold and almost wet through. Then, suddenly galvanised into life, he jumped to his feet and stood listening with the most concentrated attention.
Through the silence drifted a faint jangling sound, which seemed to come from the direction of Chantemerle. It was a bell ringing the tocsin.