Somehow she was in his arms again. He kissed her hair, and they were both silent.
"Aymar, am I hurting you?" she asked suddenly. "Was it—this shoulder?"
"Hurting me!" he answered in a low voice. "You weigh about as much as a wren! And if it were not healed it would be from this moment. Don't move! . . . You can't!" he added with a little inflection of triumph.
Yet the next moment he had loosed her himself, and stood up. "I beg your pardon, Avoye. I have not . . . I must wait."
She saw that he meant it; she knew why he felt as he did. Unnecessary as she might think his scruples, she was not going to hurt his pride more than it had already been hurt by making self-control more difficult for him. She too got up, and gave him her hand. He was her lover, but he was almost her brother, too. "You shall do what you think best, Aymar. I can wait also."
He kissed her hand, and going with her to the orchard gate, opened it for her without a word. And after he had watched her go he went and leant against a tree, with his arms folded, in the very place and almost in the same posture as he had waited her coming with such dizzy rapture three months before, when she had not come, but instead of her—disgrace. And Aymar faced that reflection now, standing motionless as, nine weeks ago to this very day, he had stood against another tree. . . . What had been blossom above him here on that magic and hateful April night was fruit now, green and immature; but in his ruined life the fruit of what he had done had ripened much more quickly. He had said that he could not ask Avoye to marry him yet—but when could he? How was he ever going to wash away the stain?
He leant there long after she had gone, his eyes fixed on the blue line of woods beyond the sloping pasture, his thoughts entangled, like his whole existence now, in this dark forest where his own act had plunged him—leant there till the peacock's ugly note came, as once before, to rouse him, and he stood up, though this was morning and July, with a little start and shiver, and went from the apple-orchard which at last had seen the meeting of lovers.
(4)
Three more hot summer days slid past much as their seven predecessors had done. But Avoye de Villecresne's face had become shadowed in their passage. And as, on the third afternoon, Aymar, followed by Sarrasin, came over the sloping meadows towards the river, more than the now customary sadness looked from his eyes. Yet, when he caught sight of a fisherman sitting very much at his ease on the other bank, his face lightened.
"Don't jump in this time!" called out Laurent. "Though indeed it is pleasanter weather for a bathe than it was that day."