Fleeing from the large towns where they had spent the stormy months of winter, Mrs. Frasne and Maurice Roquevillard had installed themselves at the Belvedere in May. They had been tempted to stay on there because they were tired of change, as well as by the moderate prices, so that they found themselves still there at the end of October. An exceptional autumn followed almost slyly in the steps of summer, and but for the shorter days, and a little freshness in the air, or the timid gold that began to touch the foliage, the sun would have inspired unlimited confidence in good weather.
This morning, in the sitting-room of their suite at the hotel, the young man was occupied with the translating of a little Italian book, Vita dei SS. Jiulio e Giuliano, a history of those two apostles who came from the Ægean Sea in the fourth century to preach the gospel in Orta. A passage taken from Lamartine, and left there in the original text, held him longer than the obscurest phrase. In a reverie he lifted his head from the prospect near the window. His eyes disdained the bouquet of trees which finished off the peninsula below him, the calm and transparent lake, the little island, a place where enchantments were performed in ancient days, which the poetic author of the biography compared to a camellia on a silver plate. Spontaneously they sought the ridge of the mountains which barred the horizon, as if he would pierce them and look beyond. While he was thus absorbed, a white form glided into the room and bent over his shoulder to glance at the open book. From among the foreign phrases the passage from Lamartine detached itself in italics:
The predestined fate of the child is the house in which it was born: his spirit is made up above all else of impressions there received. The look of our mother’s eyes is a part of our soul, entering through our oxen eyes into our inmost parts.
Mrs. Frasne quietly closed the book; and her lover, who had not heard her come in, started at the movement. Between them passed a look full of those things which lovers hardly dare to speak or even think.
“What day of the month is it?” she asked indifferently.
Reassured, he replied:
“The twenty-fifth of October.”
Then all at once she made him anxious once more:
“A year ago, do you remember, we met each other at the Calvary of Lemenc. It was there we made up our minds to flee together. Only a year, and already my love is no longer enough for you.”
“Edith!”