“I will return.”
The trouble in her face and voice affected him strangely. He did not know how Sagesse had entered into her life before this, ruining her father, casting a blight on her home. Sagesse was to her like an evil spirit. She had seen his blight on many people, he had blighted her own life once and now his shadow had fallen across her path again, he was taking Gaspard away.
Gaspard took her unresisting hand.
“I have promised to go with him, but I will return.”
“Ah, you have promised—”
That was final. With her, a promise once given was binding as a thing accomplished.
“And when?”
“We will not go for some weeks.”
He was still holding her hand; as yet they had said no word of love, yet they stood like a pair of lovers about to part, her trouble had communicated itself in some subtle way to him. The very air around them seemed suddenly filled with sadness, it was the light which was beginning to fade.
The sun had half descended behind the mountains, cut in two by the sharp edge of the hills; what remained of him was still furiously alive, palpitating, and seeming to fight against fate; but the valleys between the mornes were now filled with shadow and over-brimming, dusk was rising like a tide, waves of violet shadow passing over the landscape. Behind them, had they turned to look, they would have seen the ghost of a moon in the lilac of the eastern sky.