"No," replied Thérèse, "I am not at all afraid."
To climb to the other height, he had to go down into the little ravine which separated it from that on which they were; but the ravine was deeper than it seemed. When Laurent, having gone down half-way, saw how far he still had to go, he stopped, reluctant to leave Thérèse alone so long, and called to her, asking if she had called him.
"No, indeed I did not!" she shouted, not wishing to thwart his caprice.
It is impossible to describe what took place in Laurent's brain; he took that indeed I did not for a rebuke, and continued to descend, but less quickly, and musing as he walked.
"I have wounded her," he said, "and now she is sulky, as in the days when we played at being brother and sister. Is she going to continue to have these moody fits, now that she is my mistress? But why did I wound her? I was wrong, certainly, but it was unintentional. It is impossible that some scrap of my past should not come to my mind now and then. Is it to be an insult to her and a mortification to me every time? What does my past matter to her, since she has accepted me as I am? And yet I was wrong! yes, I was wrong; but will she never happen to mention the wretch whom she loved and thought she had married? In spite of herself, Thérèse when she is with me will remember the days she lived without me, and shall I twist it into a crime?"
He instantly answered his own question:
"Oh! yes, it would be intolerable! So I have done very wrong, and I ought to have asked her pardon at once."
But he had already reached that stage of mental fatigue when the mind is sated with enthusiasm, and when the weak and shrinking creature that every one of us is, to a greater or less extent, feels that he must resume possession of himself.
"Must humble myself again, promise again, persuade again, shed tears again?" he said to himself. "Great God! can't she be happy and trustful for a single week? It's my fault, I agree, but it's hers still more for making so much out of so little, and spoiling this lovely poetic night which I had planned to pass with her in one of the loveliest spots on earth. I have been here before with rakes and wantons, it is true; but to what corner of the outskirts of Paris could I have taken her where I was not likely to run against some such unpleasant reminiscence? Surely they can hardly be said to enchant me, and it is almost cruel to reproach me with them."
As he replied thus in his heart to the reproaches with which Thérèse was probably upbraiding him in hers, he reached the bottom of the ravine, where he felt disturbed and fatigued as after a quarrel, and threw himself on the grass in a fit of annoyance and weariness. For seven whole days he had not belonged to himself; he was conscious of a longing to reconquer his liberty, and to fancy himself alone and unsubdued for a moment.