“But I don’t want to die, I want to live. Shall you love me as much to-morrow?”
“Why not to-morrow?”
“Because I’m afraid. Don’t you see that we can’t go on like this?”
“Oh, you see it, too, then. No, we can’t any more. The future, the past, the world, we can’t suppress them. Each day you have been putting off the final reckoning.”
“Keep still, Maurice—keep still.”
She put her hand against his mouth to stop him, and for a second time she begged him:
“To-morrow, to-morrow, I promise you. I’ll do as you wish to-morrow. You shall decide our fate. But not this evening. This last evening is mine.”
And she put her lips to his, where her hand had been.
The day was waning swiftly. Among the trees the red streak that edged the mountain grew softer, and the waters of the lake took on a uniform tint of grey, barely streaked and lightened here and there by the last reflections from the setting sun.
It was he who first moved down the steps of the peristyle. He walked, unheeding what he did, in the direction that he had just pointed out to her with his hand. When he turned back again he saw his companion motionless there between two columns. So she had waited for him that other time before the Calvary of Lemenc. Her white figure stood out against the greyer wall.