She clasped her hands together with an agitated old-maidish gesture.
"What are you thinking of?" she exclaimed. "At night ... with a gentleman!"
He rubbed his eyes. Was it really possible, what he heard and saw? Could this be Helene, the guardian angel to whom he had looked up, as to a being belonging to another world?
But perhaps it was he who was to blame. Perhaps the language of innocence and virtue was no longer intelligible to him because of the fair savage who had perverted his tastes, and filled his imagination with impure pictures.
"Then let us walk quietly along the highroad," he said.
"But if some one comes?"
"We can see that no one is coming."
"Yet some one might ..."
He was at a loss for an answer. A silence ensued, and then he said, "Won't you take my arm?"
"Oh, I don't know whether I ought," replied the love of his youth.