“Hello! is my wife not with you?” he exclaimed.
“No, she has left me to myself,” she answered laughingly. “It is true you have come home earlier than usual.”
The children were playing at the other end of the garden. He sat down beside her. Their tete-a-tete produced no agitation in either of them. For nearly an hour they spoke of all sorts of matters, without for a moment feeling any desire to allude to the tenderness which filled their hearts. What was the good of referring to that? Did they not well know what might have been said? They had no confession to make. Theirs was the joy of being together, of talking of many things, of surrendering themselves to the pleasure of their isolation without a shadow of regret, in the very spot where every evening he embraced his wife in her presence.
That day he indulged in some jokes respecting her devotion to work. “Do you know,” said he, “I do not even know the color of your eyes? They are always bent on your needle.”
She raised her head and looked straight into his face, as was her custom. “Do you wish to tease me?” she asked gently.
But he went on. “Ah! they are grey—grey, tinged with blue, are they not?”
This was the utmost limit to which they dared go; but these words, the first that had sprung to his lips, were fraught with infinite tenderness. From that day onwards he frequently found her alone in the twilight. Despite themselves, and without their having any knowledge of it, their intimacy grew apace. They spoke in an altered voice, with caressing inflections, which were not apparent when others were present. And yet, when Juliette came in, full of gossip about her day in town, they could keep up the talk they had already begun without even troubling themselves to draw their chairs apart. It seemed as though this lovely springtide and this garden, with its blossoming lilac, were prolonging within their hearts the first rapture of love.
Towards the end of the month, Madame Deberle grew excited over a grand idea. The thought of giving a children’s ball had suddenly struck her. The season was already far advanced, but the scheme took such hold on her foolish brain that she hurried on the preparations with reckless haste. She desired that the affair should be quite perfect; it was to be a fancy-dress ball. And, in her own home, and in other people’s houses, everywhere, in short, she now spoke of nothing but her ball. The conversations on the subject which took place in the garden were endless. The foppish Malignon thought the project rather stupid, still he condescended to take some interest in it, and promised to bring a comic singer with whom he was acquainted.
One afternoon, while they were all sitting under the trees, Juliette introduced the grave question of the costumes which Lucien and Jeanne should wear.
“It is so difficult to make up one’s mind,” said she. “I have been thinking of a clown’s dress in white satin.”