"Go, go. I will arrange! You will have a note from me to-morrow. Hurry, good-night, good-night!"
She was in the car; now the door was shutting on her; yet once more he pulled it open, "Ah! Oh, good-night!"
At the side of the car, the snow whirling round his head, Julien kissed her face in the darkness; Alfred, relentless, drove the car onward, and the door shutting with a slam, left him standing by the inn.
CHAPTER XIV
THE RIVER
The indifferent Alfred drove his unhappy burden towards the river. Walled in by the rush of snowflakes about him he made what way he could, but it was well-nigh impossible to see. The lamps gave no light, for the flakes had built a shutter across the glass like a policeman's dark lantern. The flying multitudes in the air turned him dizzy; he could not tell upon which side of the road he drove, and he could not tell what he would do when the wall beyond the outskirts of Chantilly forsook him. As to what was happening below him, what ruts, ditches, pits or hillocks he was navigating, he had no idea; his ship was afloat upon the snow, sluggishly rolling and heaving as it met with soft, mysterious obstacles.
Heaviness and gloom sat upon the velvet seat behind him. The white, wild night outside was playful and waggish compared with the black dejection behind the opaque glass windows.
Fanny, who could not see her hand move in the darkness, saw clearly with other miserable and roving eyes the road that lay before her.
"Julien, good-bye. Don't forget me!" That she would say to him in a few days; that was the gate, the black portal which would lead her into the road. That she would say, with entreaty, yet no painful tones of hers would represent enough the entreaty of her heart that neither would forget the other. She thought of this.
Not in wilful unreason, or in disbelief of his promise, she looked at this parting as though it might be final. Without him she could see no charm ahead. And yet…. Tough, leathery heart—indestructible spinner she knew herself to be—no sooner should the dew fall from this enchanting fabric, the web itself be torn, than she would set to work upon the flimsiest of materials to weave another. And with such weaving comes forgetfulness. She thought of this.