“You may well be, nevertheless.”
She never questioned me about my past. Through a generosity, the nobility of which I understand now, she did not wish to crush me with it, although she suspected that it had been turbid and stormy. Believing me to be as honest as she was, she considered that I was sufficiently punished by not being able to sweep it utterly away when we exchanged our unequal love.
As we turned for home the wind arose. Should we find our leaves again in the morning? On the avenue, those on the chestnut trees were stained brown and red. Before the chateau, the plane trees, with their leaves open like giant hands, were green and dull gold. They offered a splendid prize to the north wind which was beginning to blow. Each one, as it was gathered in, wavered gently in the air. Along the wall, the well-sheltered Virginia creeper spread out its vivid red, and the hardy hedges of privet and hawthorne preserved a touch of green in this symphony of brilliant colours.
I was a little ahead and I turned.
Why did Raymonde, in her white woollen dress, and mounted on her glistening horse, why did she, so young, seem to be so in harmony with the autumn, and like it to be so clothed with the delicate charm of things that perish? And why, feeling thus, did I not swear to watch over each instant of her happiness and her life?
In the forest she showed me a young ash tree which, after several years, had succeeded in piercing the baleful vault of foliage and crept upward between its two powerful neighbours, now exposing its summit to the sun’s rays.
“Raymonde, are you still a shadow-tree?” I asked.
She recalled our former conversations, and, surprised at the attention I had paid to them, smiled.
“The ash,” she said, “is a tree of light.”
I believed that this was an answer and gloried in it. In reality she had not replied to me at all; possibly she was thinking of those trees that are so sensitive that the least hardship pierces them.