She rose slowly, slipping upon the carpet while he went to the window to look mechanically into the yard. Between these two creatures but a moment before clasped together, a sudden icy coldness sprung up as if each had divined that the hour was about to sound, terrible as a knell, when their affairs must be settled. The kisses of love are to be paid for.
Standing before the mirror, half undressed, Marianne was arranging her hair. Her white shoulders, her still heaving and oppressed bosom were still exposed within the border of her fine chemisette. She felt her wrists, instinctively examining her bracelets, and looked toward the bed in an absent sort of way as if to see if some charm had not slipped from them.
"Guy," she said abruptly, but in a tone which she tried to make endearing, "promise me that you will not refuse what I am about to ask you."
"I promise."
They now quite naturally substituted for the "thou" of affectionate address, the more formal "you," secretly realizing that after the intertwining of their bodies, their real individualities independent of all surprises or sensual appetite, would find themselves face to face.
"I could wish that our affection—and it is profound, is it not, Guy?—dated only from the moment that we have just passed."
"I do not regret the past," he said.
"Nor I! Yet I would like to efface it—yes, by a single stroke!"
She held between her white fingers some rebellious little locks of hair that had come out, which she had rolled and twisted, and casting them into the clear flame, she said:
"See! to burn it like that!—Pft!—"