“To please me,” she said.
“Very well,” he said, “but you must come too.”
She at once summoned her pluck and rose to her feet; and, when she expressed her wish to get back without delay he led her through the short cuts where there was hardly room to walk side by side. But their pace slackened at once; and they stopped three times to rest on the road. Gilberte no longer displayed any hurry. What did they say? Nothing but insignificant words, which they did not remember afterwards. Nevertheless, when uttering them, they felt that they had never been interested in weightier matters. What importance could suddenly have attached, in the course of a walk, to the sight of two initials interlaced on the bark of a tree, or to the flight of a bird, or to a stone rolling down a slope! Whereas, to them, these were so many astounding incidents that deserved a stop and the interchange of a few ecstatic words.
A contest between some insect and a squad of five ants that were trying to drag it away kept them for quite a long time. Who would be the victor? Gilberte took pity on the insect and saved it when it was on the point of falling in the fray. Guillaume exclaimed, in accents of profound conviction:
“You are the most generous-hearted creature I have ever met.”
Guillaume compared the moss at the foot of an oak to velvet; and Gilberte became aware that all the poetry in the world was summed up in her companion.
Having exhausted their original reflexions, their brilliant remarks and their mutual admiration, they were silent until they emerged from the wood. A lane of apple-trees led them past furze and rocks. At the foot of the slope ran the Varenne. After they had taken a turn, Gilberte cried:
“Look, that might be my garden, on the other side.... Why, so it is!... There’s the Logis.... Where are we?”
She walked on. They came to a cluster of small fir-trees. When they had passed them, they were just opposite the ruined summer-house, with only the width of the valley in between.
Gilberte gave a start. That spur of the hill, that circle of red rocks surrounding it, that cluster of firs: was this not the spot where the unknown stranger, for months ...?