George perceived that she trembled, and asked: "Do you wish to go in again?"
"No," she replied. "You see, the sun's coming out. I shall warm up."
An indefinable desire for intimacy had seized her. She pressed closely to him, became suddenly caressing, and her voice, look, contact, gestures—and all her being—were full of seduction. She wished to shed over the loved one the most feminine of her charms; she wished to intoxicate him, to dazzle him with a display of present happiness capable of eclipsing the reflection of bygone happiness. She wished to appear to him more amiable, more adorable, more desirable than ever before. A fear assailed her—an atrocious fear—that he might regret the woman of long ago, sigh for the vanished delights, believe that then only had he attained the height of intoxication. "His recollections," she thought, "have filled my soul with so much melancholy! I have restrained my tears with difficulty. And he too, perhaps, is sad at heart. How heavily the past hangs over our love! Perhaps he is tired of me? Perhaps he is unaware of this weariness, and does not avow it to himself, willing to live under the illusion? But he is perhaps incapable now of finding any happiness in me. If I am still dear to him, it is perhaps only because he recognizes in me an object for his dear sorrows. Alas! I too, when with him, taste true happiness only at rare intervals; I suffer too, and yet I love him, and I love my suffering, and my only desire is to please him, and I cannot imagine life without this love. Why then are we so sad, since we love one another?"
She leaned heavily on her lover's arm, gazing at him with eyes to which the shadow of her thoughts imparted an expression of profound tenderness.
"Two years ago, about the same hour, we left the chapel together; and he spoke to me of things in no way connected with love, in a voice which moved my heart, which touched my soul as if with a caress of the lips; and this ideal caress I enjoyed like a long kiss. I trembled, I trembled incessantly, because I felt an unknown feeling born in me. Oh! it was a divine hour! We have reached our second anniversary to-day, and we still love one another. Just now he spoke; and if his voice affected me differently than it used to do, it still moves me to the bottom of my soul. We have before us a delightful evening. Why regret the days that are gone? Our liberty, our present intimacy, are they not worth the incertitude and hesitations of that time? Even our memories, so numerous, do they not add a new charm to our love? I love him—I give myself up to him entirely; in the presence of his desire I no longer know modesty. In two years he has transformed me; he has made of me another woman; he has given me new senses, a new soul, a new intelligence. I am creation. He can intoxicate himself through me as he would through one of his own thoughts. I belong entirely to him, now and forever."
Then, passionately pressing her form against his, she asked, "Are you not happy?"
The tone in which she spoke moved him; and, as if suddenly enveloped by a warm breath, he experienced a thrill of real happiness.
"Yes, I am happy," he answered.
And when the locomotive whistle was heard, their hearts had the same palpitation.
At last they were alone in their compartment. She closed all the windows, waited until the train was again in motion; they fell into each other's arms, kissed each other, and repeated all the caressing names which their tenderness of the last two years had used.