"It is at the Hôtel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at mid-day?"
He nodded.
"Till to-morrow then!" said Emma, in a last caress; and she watched him go.
He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes—
"To-morrow!" she cried.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall.
"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! she was a pretty mistress!"
And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her.
"For, after all," he exclaimed gesticulating, "I can't exile myself—have a child on my hands."