“Possibly, but he loves you.”
This time he received no reply; indeed it was not a question. There was only one thing more to say:
“And you—do you love him?”
“How can I know?” she murmured, and then, realising the truth, she wept. These first tears I did not see. How many others did her love cost her, less observed, even more secret, which I saw no better?
To young girls who have not squandered their imagination in precocious little flirtations, love is like a garden in springtime before the dawn. The flowers are there, all the flowers. We do not realise it, although we inhale their perfume, because it is so incredible. Thus, enclosed within the heart, the magic enchantment sleeps, invisible. Day breaks, and with it all the world seems to be born. But the love which shines forth was always there.
* * *
The next day I had my turn.
Mme. Mairieux watched for my arrival. It was she who opened the door for me, and from her I learned of my happiness. It lost nothing in the telling, for she was anxious to spare me several moments of anxiety.
Raymonde met me in the drawing-room, holding her father’s hand.
She wore the same simple dress of white serge that she had had on the day before. Her smooth cheeks had grown pale; she did not smile, she was serious, indeed almost severe. When her eyes rested upon me they seemed to me to have grown not only even larger, but almost terrified, and at the same time that I read in them the avowal of her love, I saw a kind of holy fear, a sort of religious ecstasy. With ardour I poured out all my love to her, but of what value were my protestations in comparison with that pathetic countenance haloed by devotion? Why did I not throw myself upon my knees to plead before her, to pray to her as to a saint?