A few minutes later the carriage stopped. They stepped out of it; and Leonard drove on again, leaving them on the outskirts of a little wood from which they looked across the river. A meadow covered with waving reeds ran between it and them.
Josephine Balsamo held out her hand:
“Good-by, Ralph. A little further on you will find Mailleraie Station.”
“But what about you?” he asked.
“I? My abode is close at hand.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Yes, you do: that barge which you can just see between the branches.”
“I’ll take you to it.”
A narrow embankment ran across the meadow through the middle of the reeds. The Countess took her way along it, followed by Ralph.
So they came to a piece of open ground, close by the barge, which was still hidden behind a curtain of willows. No one could see them or hear them. They were alone under the expanse of blue sky. And there there passed some of those minutes of which one keeps the memory for a lifetime and which influence the whole course of one’s destiny.