She laid her free hand first on her forehead and then on her bosom.
“My heart is so heavy,” she murmured in a low voice.
“Alice,” he said passionately, “don’t be afraid. I love you, I will protect you.”
And bending down he touched with his lips the little trembling hand that he had kept in his own. His kiss thrilled her. She sighed.
“Let us go back. This is not right.”
“Not right when I love you so much? Am I not your betrothed?”
“It is not right,” she repeated.
They looked at each other closely.
The evening sky was fading. A blue mist quivered over the park, under the trees and across the lawns. It was the hour of mystery, when everything is saddened by the fear of death. Daylight still lingered, but a delicate, wasted daylight, languorous in its grace. And the path which disappeared into the wood became in turn violet and rose-color.
In the young girl’s eyes he saw the reflection of the setting sun. All the melancholy of dying nature was held in this living mirror.