“My thinking of you as many hours as there are in the day,” he answered.
She put her hands on her hips.
“I do not oblige you to do so.”
“Yes, it is you,” he stammered; “I cannot sleep, nor rest, nor eat, nor anything.”
“What do you need to cure you of all that?” she asked.
He stood there in dismay, his arms swinging, his eyes staring, his mouth agape.
She hit him a punch in the stomach and ran off.
From that day they met each other along the roadside, in by-roads or else at twilight on the edge of a field, when he was going home with his horses and she was driving her cows home to the stable.
He felt himself carried, cast toward her by a strong impulse of his heart and body. He would have liked to squeeze her, strangle her, eat her, make her part of himself. And he trembled with impotence, impatience, rage, to think she did not belong to him entirely, as if they were one being.
People gossiped about it in the countryside. They said they were engaged. He had, besides, asked her if she would be his wife, and she had answered “Yes.”