She contradicted him. "I know you better than you know yourself."
He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the commonplace words she had last said, went on sounding and resounding, until they had no more likeness to themselves. Madeleine rose, and pushed back her chair, with a grating noise.
"I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for foolishness. Come, wake up, and tell me what plans you have for the holidays."
"If I had a sister, I should like her to be like you," said Maurice, watching her busy with the lamp. "Clear-headed, and helpful to a fellow."
"I suppose men always will continue to consider that the greatest compliment they can pay," said Madeleine, and turned up the light so high that they both blinked.—And then she scolded the young man soundly for his intention of remaining in Leipzig during the holidays.
But when he rose to go, she said, with an impulsiveness that was foreign to her: "I wish you had a friend."
It was his turn to smile. "Have you had enough of me?"
Madeleine, who was sitting with crossed arms, remained grave. "I mean a man. Some one older than yourself, and who has had experience. The best-meaning woman in the world doesn't count."
Only a very few days later, an occasion offered when, with profit to himself, he might have acted upon Madeleine's introductory advice. He had been for a quick, solitary walk, and was returning, in the evening between nine and ten o'clock, along one of the paths of the wood, when suddenly, and close at hand, he heard the sound of voices. He stopped instantaneously, for by the jump his heart gave, he knew that Louise was one of the speakers. What she said was inaudible to him; but it was enough to be able to listen, unseen, to her voice. Hearing it like this, as something existing for itself, he was amazed at its depth and clearness; he felt that her personal presence had, until now, hindered him from appreciating a beautiful but immaterial thing at its true worth. At first, like a cadence that repeats itself, its tones rose and fell, but with more subtle inflections than the ordinary voice has: there was a note in it that might have belonged to a child's voice; another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little reserve as the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on in a monotone, like a Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things worn threadbare by repetition, and already said too often. Gradually, it died away in the surrounding silence. There was no response but a gentle rustling of the leaves overhead. It began anew, and, in the interval, seemed to have gained in intensity; now there was a bitterness in it which, when it swelled, made it give out a tone like the roughly touched strings of an instrument; it seemed to be accusing, to be telling of unmerited suffering. And, this time, it elicited a reply, but a casual, indifferent one, which might have related to the weather, or to the time of night. Louise gave a shrill laugh, and then, as plainly as if the words were being carved in stone before his eyes, Maurice heard her say: "You have never given me a moment's happiness."
As before, no answer was returned, and almost immediately his ear caught a muffled sound of footsteps. At the same moment, a night-wind shook the tree-tops; there was a general fluttering and swaying around him; and he came back to himself to find that he was standing rigid, holding on to a slender tree that grew close by the path. His first conscious thought was that this wind meant rain ... there would be another storm in the night ... and the summer holidays—time of partings—were at the door. She would go away ... and he would perhaps never see her again.