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."
They were waiting for an opportunity to talk to their parents about
it.
But, all at once, she stopped coming to meet him at the usual hour. He
did not even see her as he wandered round the farm. He could only
catch a glimpse of her at mass on Sunday. And one Sunday, after the
sermon, the priest actually published the banns of marriage between
Victoire-Adelaide-Martin and Joséphin-Isidore Vallin.
Benoist felt a sensation in his hands as if the blood had been drained
off. He had a buzzing in the ears, and could hear nothing; and
presently he perceived that his tears were falling on his prayer book.
For a month he stayed in his room. Then he went back to his work.
But he was not cured, and it was always in his mind. He avoided the
roads that led past her home, so that he might not even see the trees
in the yard, and this obliged him to make a great circuit morning and
evening.
She was now married to Vallin, the richest farmer in the district.
Benoist and he did not speak now, though they had been comrades from
childhood.
One evening, as Benoist was passing the town hall, he heard that she
was enceinte. Instead of experiencing a feeling of sorrow, he
experienced, on the contrary, a feeling of relief. It was over, now,
all over. They were more separated by that than by her marriage. He
really preferred that it should be so.