He had stationed himself in front of the rick, and spread out his arms, displaying his chest that she might throw herself upon it. When she suddenly came to a decision, and, shutting her eyes, let herself go, her fall down the slippery side of the stack was so smart that she knocked him over and got somehow a-straddle round his ribs. She lay on the ground, with her petticoats up, choking with laughter and spluttering out that she wasn't hurt. On feeling her burning and perspiring form against his face, he had seized her in his arms. Her powerful feminine odour, the strong smell of the hay and the fresh air, intoxicated him, stiffening all his sinews with a sudden mad desire. Then, too, there was something else; a hitherto unknown passion for this child, now bursting into strength; a sentimental and sensual fondness which had originated long back, increasing with their frolicsome, hearty laughter, and ending in this longing to clasp her there upon the grass.
"Oh, Jean, don't! You're breaking my bones!"
She still laughed, thinking him in play. He, catching sight of Palmyre's saucer-like eyes, started up shivering, with the wild aspect of a drunkard sobered by the view of a yawning chasm. What was this? It was not Lise he wanted, but this chit! The thought of Lise's flesh in contact with his own had never so much as quickened his heart; whilst all his blood rose and suffocated him at the mere idea of kissing Françoise. Now he knew why he was so fond of visiting and helping the two sisters. Yet the child was so young that he was ashamed and in despair.
Lise was just then coming back from the Fouans. On the road she had reflected. She would have preferred Buteau, because, after all, he was the father of her baby. The old folks were right; why push things on? The day Buteau said no there would still be Jean to say yes.
She accosted the latter without delay.
"No answer; uncle knows nothing. Let us wait."
Still distraught and quivering, Jean stared at her without comprehending. Then he remembered: the marriage, the infant, Buteau's consent, the whole arrangement that, two hours earlier, he had considered advantageous for her and for himself. He hastened to reply:
"Yes, yes, let us wait. That'll be best."
Night was drawing in. One star already shone in the violet sky. In the growing twilight, the dim round outlines of the first stacks—protuberances on the smooth expanse of meadow—were all that was distinguishable. But the odours from the warm earth rose in greater strength amid the calm air: sounds were heard more distinctly, more prolonged and more musically limpid. Voices of men and women, faint laughter, mingled with the snort of an animal, the clink of an implement; while some mowers, growing pertinacious over a strip of meadow, went on unremittingly with their task, the broad regular whizz of the scythe still resounding, although the work was no longer visible.