Unquestionably she was about to say: “I am their only child, and they love to see me,” but instead she looked at me with her clear glance and kept silent.
That was my first direct blow at the ideal which, she had formed of me. My opinions on our journey, my restlessness, my strange curiosity, had made her uneasy, but she had kept her faith intact. Now, in the way she looked at me, I read her distress at seeing me reveal this petty jealousy. Tears rose in her eyes, but she restrained them. Irritated with myself and angry with her as well, instead of restoring my lost tenderness, I permitted the sense of my injustice to drop into her heart, to grow there as the circles from a falling stone in a quiet lake widen until they reach the shore.
Next day, timid and bashful, she asked me if I objected to her going to the lodge.
“Of course not,” I answered crossly. “Have I ever hindered your liberty?”
Again an opportunity offered itself to make amends, and again I did not avail myself of it.
She went to the lodge, but shortened her visit. After her return, the promptness of which I refrained from mentioning, M. Mairieux appeared more than once at the doorstep, wandering about like a soul in pain in the avenue leading up to the chateau. I saw him take up several pieces of work only to abandon them again, passing confusedly from one thing to another. Something was missing in his day: the smile of his daughter, of which I had deprived him. He continually approached the door and then withdrew again. I should have called to him, “She is here, come in,” and instead I contented myself with watching him. My apprenticeship of cruelty was beginning already. Raymonde saw him too, but she did not move. She was waiting for my decision, resolved not to thwart me, and hoping everything from my tenderness. Hating the wrong I did, I none the less accentuated it, and thus, without benefit to myself, I impaired a source of joy.
The following day Mme. Mairieux invaded our apartment. She came to make certain on the spot of the happiness of her daughter. Raymonde would have liked to spare me these interminable and noisy visits, which my coldness could not shorten. She knew how impatient I was after them. I was growing tired of the Sleeping Woods; she knew it and mourned for it, and, thinking only of me, blamed herself for it.
* * *
Almost immediately after our return to the chateau Raymonde’s condition necessitated our giving up our horseback rides.
“Let us walk,” she said, “we can see better when we go slowly, and one hears the life in the trees better, too, and the stirring of the little blades of grass. Shan’t we?”