"Do you only love your engine?" she inquired. "People joke about it, you know. They pretend you are always polishing, and making it shine, as though you had caresses for nothing else. If I tell you this, it is because I am your friend."
He looked at her, now, in the pale light of the fumy sky. And he remembered her when she was a child. Even then, she was violent and self-willed, but she sprang to his neck, as soon as he entered the house, with all the passionate impulse of a madcap. Later on, having frequently lost sight of her, he had found her grown taller each time he saw her. She continued to put her arms round his neck, troubling him, more and more, by the flame of her great light eyes.
She was now a superb woman, and no doubt she had loved him a long time—from childhood. His heart began to beat. A sudden sensation told him that he was the one she awaited. He felt a swimming in the head, his first impulse, in the anguish he experienced, was to flee. Love had always made him mad, and he felt bent on murder.
"What are you doing there, on your feet?" she resumed. "Why don't you sit down?"
Again he hesitated. Then, his legs suddenly becoming very tired, and himself vanquished by the desire to try love once more, he sank down beside her on the heap of cords. But he said nothing; his throat was quite dry. It was she, now, the proud, the silent one, who chattered merrily until she lost breath, deafening herself with her own verbosity.
"You see, the mistake mamma made was to marry Misard," she began. "He'll play her a nasty trick. I don't care a fig, because one has quite enough to do with one's own business. Don't you think so? And, besides, mamma sends me off to bed as soon as I want to cut in. So she must do the best she can by herself! I pass my time outside the house, I do. I am thinking of things for later on. Ah! you know, I saw you go by this morning, on your engine. Look! over there, from those bushes, where I was seated. But you, you never look—I'll tell you the things I'm thinking of, but not now, later, when we have quite become good friends."
She had let the scissors slip away from her, and he, still silent, had caught hold of her two hands. Delighted, she abandoned them to him. But when he carried them to his burning lips, she gave an affrighted start. The warrior woman awoke, prepared, and warlike.
"No, no! Leave me alone!" she exclaimed. "I won't have it. Keep quiet. Let's talk."
Without heeding her, without hearing what she said, he grasped her brutally in his arms, crushing her lips beneath his own. She uttered a feeble cry, which was more like a moan, so deep, so sweet, that it revealed the tenderness she had so long concealed. Then, as he, breathless, ceased his kisses and looked at her, he was all at once seized with frenzy, with such frightful ferocity, that he glanced round about him in search of a weapon, a stone, something, in fact, to kill her with. His eyes fell upon the scissors, shining among the bits of cord. At a bound, he secured them, and he would have buried them in her bosom had not an icy chill brought him suddenly to his senses. Casting the scissors from him, he fled, distracted, while she imagined he had left her because she had resisted his caress.