It quieted him, but he said to himself that: it was cold, very cold; not one word of endearment. It would have pleased him better if she had resented his ill behaviour. She seemed to care little for those words of fire, to have already forgotten them.
He was with her at the hour named. Isabel met him with scarcely a sign of reproach, but he felt that her smile was not what he had once known. She had, too, a slight air of fatigue, and seated herself before she spoke to him.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he explained, referring to the previous afternoon, “but that it was so long since I had heard from you. Why didn’t you write?”
“I meant to, really; but all sorts of unexpected things have been taking up my time.”
“And it is a week since I saw you.”
“No; last Sunday.”
“Oh, that is not seeing you! It is mere misery to be in your presence with others. I avoid seeing your face, try not to hear you speaking.”
“But why? It is very hard to understand you, Bernard.”
“That is my fear. You don’t understand me. You can’t see what a difference there is for me between love and friendship. I cannot treat you as a friend. All the time that I am near you, I am shaken with passion; to play indifference is a sort of treachery. I must never again see you when others are by—I can’t bear it!”
She looked before her in a kind of perplexity, and did not move when he took her hand.