“On my word, I have the same thought at this moment,” she replied, deeply touched by the grand presence of mind he had just shown in defending her.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll come and speak to you very soon. These are lovely nights.”
“No, to-morrow,” said she, “to-morrow, do you understand? after the wagons have gone.”
But at the close of the performance, when he saw Livette coming toward him with pale cheeks, so pale that she looked like a corpse, he was seized with poignant remorse.
“She saw me,” he said to himself, “and she is suffering from jealousy.”
And so great was his pity for the poor little girl that he felt capable of sacrificing to her, once for all, at the very moment when it had become more difficult than ever, his insane passion for the other. All the chaste affection he had felt for Livette from the very first, so different from passion and so pleasant to the senses, came back to him like the puff of fresh air that awakens one from a bad dream.
Furthermore, he was surprised, almost disconcerted, to find that the gipsy’s formal promise did not afford him the pleasure he had expected when he had dreamed of it in anticipation.
Livette left him to join her father, who was not to take her back to the château until the evening of the following day, two or three hours after the departure of the pilgrims, in order to remain until the end of the fête, and to avoid the thick dust and the enforced slowness of the long procession.
And that day—in the afternoon—Renaud fell in with Monsieur le curé.
“Good-day, drover. What is the matter, my boy? You seem preoccupied.”