“Oh! good heavens!” he exclaimed, “you are crying, mademoiselle, you are crying! Have I offended you?”
“No, no,” she murmured.
She tried to keep back her tears, but she could not. Even when at table, she had thought her heart was about to burst. She abandoned herself in the darkness entirely, stifled by her sobs, thinking that if Hutin had been in Deloche's place and said such tender things to her, she would have been unable to resist. This confession made to herself filled her with confusion. A feeling of shame burnt her face, as if she had already fallen into the arms of that Hutin, who was disporting himself with those girls.
“I didn't mean to offend you,” continued Deloche, almost crying also.
“No, but listen,” said she, her voice still trembling; “I am not at all angry with you. But never speak to me again as you have just done. What you ask is impossible. Oh! you're a good fellow, and I'm quite willing to be your friend, but nothing more. You understand—your friend.”
He shuddered. After a few steps taken in silence, he stammered: “In fact, you don't love me?”
And as she spared him the pain of a brutal “no,” he resumed in a soft, heart-broken voice: “Oh, I was prepared for it I have never had any luck, I know I can never be happy. At home, they used to beat me. In Paris, I've always been a drudge. You see, when one does not know how to rob other fellows of their mistresses, and when one is too awkward to earn as much as the others, why the best thing is to go into some corner and die. Never fear, I sha'n't torment you any more. As for loving you, you can't prevent me, can you? I shall love you for nothing, like a dog. There, everything escapes me, that's my luck in life.”
And he, too, burst into tears. She tried to console him, and in their friendly effusion they found they belonged to the same department—she to Valognes, he to Briquebec, eight miles from each other, and this was a fresh tie. His father, a poor, needy bailiff, and sickly jealous, used to drub him, calling him a bastard, exasperated with his long pale face and tow-like hair, which, said he, did not belong to the family. And they got talking about the vast pastures, surrounded with quick-set hedges, of the shady paths winding beneath the elm trees, and of the grass grown roads, like the alleys in a park.
Around them night was getting darker, but they could still distinguish the rushes on the banks, and the interlaced foliage, black beneath the twinkling stars; and a peacefulness came over them, they forgot their troubles, brought nearer by their ill-luck, in a closer feeling of friendship.
“Well?” asked Pauline of Denise, taking her aside when they arrived at the station.