This was a lost corner of the vast world where the people of The Ladies' Paradise bestirred themselves. You reached it by an intricate network of stairs and passages. The work-rooms, situated in the attics, were low sloping chambers, lighted by large windows cut in the zinc roofing, and furnished solely with long tables and large cast-iron stoves; and all along was a crowd of work-girls engaged on the under-clothing, the lace, the upholstery and the dressmaking, and living winter and summer in a stifling heat, amidst the odour peculiar to the business. You had to skirt all these rooms, and turn to the right after passing the dressmakers, before coming to the solitary end of the corridor. The few customers, whom a salesman occasionally brought here for an order, gasped for breath, tired out and frightened, with the sensation of having turned round and round for hours, and of being a hundred leagues above the street.
Denise had often found Deloche waiting for her. As second-hand she had charge of the arrangements between her department and the work-room where only the models and alterations were attended to, and was always going up and down to give the necessary orders. The young man would watch for her and invent any pretext to run after her; and then affected to be surprised when he met her at the work-room door. She got to laugh about the matter and it became quite an understood thing. The corridor ran alongside one of the cisterns, an enormous iron tank containing twelve thousand gallons of water; and on the roof there was another one of equal size, reached by an iron ladder. For an instant, Deloche would stand talking, leaning one shoulder against the cistern in the continual abandonment of his long body, bent by fatigue. A sing-song noise of water was heard, a mysterious noise, the musical vibration of which the iron tank ever retained. Despite the solitude, Denise would at times turn round anxiously, thinking, she had seen a shadow pass on the bare, pale yellow walls. But the window would soon attract them, they would lean against it, and forget themselves in a pleasant gossip, in endless souvenirs of their native place. Below them extended the immense glass roof of the central gallery, a lake of glass bounded by the distant housetops, as by a rocky coast. Beyond, they saw nothing but the sky, a sheet of sky, which cast in the sleeping water of the glass work a reflection of the flight of its clouds and its soft azure.
It so happened that Deloche was that day speaking of Valognes. "I was six years old; my mother used to take me to Valognes market in a cart," he said. "You know it's ten miles away; we had to leave Briquebec at five o'clock. It's a fine country down our way. Do you know it?"
"Yes, yes," replied Denise, slowly, her glances wandering far away. "I was there once, but was very little then. Roads with grass on each side, eh? and now and again sheep browsing in couples, dragging their clog along by the rope." She stopped, then resumed with a vague smile: "Our roads run for miles as straight as arrows between rows of trees which afford some shade. We have meadows surrounded by hedges taller than I am, where there are horses and cows grazing. We have a little river too, and the water is very cold, under the brushwood, in a spot I well know."
"It is the same with us, exactly!" cried Deloche, delighted.
"There's grass everywhere, each one encloses his plot with thorns and elms, and is at once at home; and it's quite green, a green far different to what we see in Paris. Dear me! how I've played in the hollow road, on the left, coming down from the mill!"
Their voices died away, they remained with their eyes fixed, lost on the sunny lake of the glass work. A mirage rose up before them from that blinding water, they beheld an endless succession of meadows, the Cotentin country steeped in the breath of the ocean, bathed in a luminous vapour, which blurred the horizon with the delicate grey of a water-colour. Below them, beneath the colossal iron framework, in the silk hall, was the roar of business, the trepidation of the machine at work; the entire house vibrated with the tramping of the crowd, the bustle of the salesmen, the life of the thirty thousand persons hurtling there; and they, carried away by their dreams, thought they could hear the wind passing over the grass and shaking the tall trees, as they detected this deep dull clamour with which the roofs were resounding.
"Ah! Mademoiselle Denise," stammered Deloche, "why aren't you kinder to me? I love you so much!" Tears had come into his eyes, and as she signed to him to stop, he continued quickly: "No—let me tell you these things once more. We should get on so well together! People always find something to talk about when they come from the same part."
He was choking, and she was at last able to say kindly: "You're not reasonable; you promised me never to speak of that again. It's impossible. I have great friendship for you, because you're a nice fellow; but I wish to remain free."
"Yes, yes. I know," he replied in a broken voice, "you don't love me. Oh! you may say so, I quite understand it. There's nothing in me to make you love me. Listen, I've only had one sweet moment in my life, and that was when I met you at Joinville, do you remember? For a moment, under the trees, when it was so dark, I thought your arm trembled, and was stupid enough to imagine——"