“Why?”
“Isn’t it the regular pilgrimage for honeymoons?”
She bent her head modestly, supple and pliant, and appeared all at once a young girl just betrothed—woman of thirty though she was, with her face that could change so easily from disenchantment to childish grace, as eager to taste of life as children are of those green fruits the very sight of which sets the teeth on edge.
The shadows were already coming up over the plain. Before them the map of the landscape grew clearer as its golden tones grew purple. She suffered from these too beautiful October evenings as from desire.
“To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow.”
He took a step forward, and turning his back deliberately on the scene, he looked at her alone, as she stood leaning there against a column beneath the peristyle of the chapel. Was she not henceforth to be all his country to him?
They took a sort of revenge against the town by going openly down the hill of Lemenc together, as far as the Reclus bridge, taking the risk of meeting people whom they knew.
“It’s almost five,” she said as she was leaving him. “Only seven hours more.”
Hope revivified the flame in her eyes. Yet Maurice could only see in these seven hours, distastefully, the cruel time that he must pass in deception of his family. She guessed this, and sympathised with her lover’s lot, meaning to destroy in advance the influence that she feared.
“Poor child, shall you know how to fib for a whole evening?”