"I suggested that we walk along an unsanded path as far as the crossways of the Table. About her head and over her neck floated one of those white veils such as women are wearing nowadays, which seem befitting to a certain type of face, as sea gulls to a ship on the water. From time to time I watched her as she walked. She trod so gently on the dead leaves that they scarcely rustled. I followed the delicacy of her movements. In her long falcon eyes flashed sparks of pleasure. The sun was already setting in the woods through which we could see the horizon; the days have grown so short. A pleasant forest whose extent is not overwhelming like the German forests—whose order rests and soothes, instead of suffocating one, and which invites us to the hunt, to merry-making, to sentimental walks. A stag, crossing an avenue, looked at us fearlessly. At the crossways of the Table we saw twelve short roads comparable under their light archways to a dozen slender rays.
"Our return was much slower. I felt her nearness to me. I should only have had to bend a little to take her in my arms. But the expression of her eyes often seems somewhat distant to me. I walked more slowly and said to her:
"'Why do we realize life so powerfully when we are together?'
"'Because we are friends.'
"She understood immediately whither I was tending. Her face is so expressive that I read her impressions at once. She was overwrought. She tried to stop me.
"'Say no more,' she begged.
"It was too late. She realized, even if she did not already know it, the place she filled in my heart. With teeth clenched, trembling and shrinking, taken unawares as a stream which freezes, she listened to my love. Was I mistaken in believing I saw her grow and brighten? She did not hide from me her agitation, nor even her joy.
"'I should have interrupted you; I had not the courage. Forgive me. I have not been happy, and it is so inspiring for a woman to hear a man like you say these things, which have entered into my soul as the sun into the forest. I did not know how to resist them. Be indulgent with me—why have you come so late into my life?'
"'Too late?'
"'Yes.'