“Oh, I love you,” she cried, “and I torment you. But don’t you see, I’m suffocated here in Chambéry. I want to get away from it, to love you freely, to live. I’ve a horror of falsehood. And you, you don’t love me.”
“Edith,” he cried, “how can you say that?”
“No, you don’t,” she repeated. “If you really loved me you would have made me your own a long time ago.”
Heavy hearted with these reproaches, they began their walk again, slowly. The view, taken out of its frame now, grew larger, and in the distance, beyond the last spires of Le Nivolet, disclosed Lake Bourget, its violet-blue merging with graduated tints into the purple mists that rose from its further end. But the two lovers saw nothing of all this. This mortal sweetness of the year, this high inquietude of nature, this enthusiasm of the autumn evening, like one long cry of desire—what need had they for anything of this outside their own hearts?
Near the house they found Mrs. Roquevillard, who came herself to meet Mrs. Frasne, though she was not supposed to be outdoors after sundown.
... Later in the evening Mr. Roquevillard, returning from the wine-presses before he was expected, espied his son and the young woman in a shadowy corner. During the vintage there is much coming and going in a house, and it is easy to creep outside without being noticed.
“He saw us,” said Maurice.
“All the better,” she replied.
And as Mr. Roquevillard passed behind the stable that had been the ancient home of his ancestors, to reach the dwelling that his grandfather had built and he himself enlarged, he tried in vain to shake off the anxiety that weighed upon him.
“I was young once, too,” he reminded himself.