He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she said to him—
“How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to me?”
The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another.
“I have sometimes thought of it,” she went on.
“What a dream!” murmured Léon. And fingering gently the blue binding of her long white sash, he added, “And who prevents us from beginning now?”
“No, my friend,” she replied; “I am too old; you are too young. Forget me! Others will love you; you will love them.”
“Not as you!” he cried.
“What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it.”
She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship.
Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know, quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his trembling hands attempted.