“Very well. Keep a lookout for Charolais’s return in two or three hours from now. If there’s anything, I shall be at the farm.”
He walked on and said to Beautrelet:
“This makes me uneasy—is it Shears? Ah, if it’s he, in his present state of exasperation, I have everything to fear!”
He hesitated a moment: “I wonder if we hadn’t better turn back. Yes, I have a nasty presentiment of evil.”
Gently undulating plains stretched before them as far as the eye could see. A little to the left, a series of handsome avenues of trees led to the farm of the Neuvillette, the buildings of which were now in view. It was the retreat which he had prepared, the haven of rest which he had promised Raymonde. Was he, for the sake of an absurd idea, to renounce happiness at the very moment when it seemed within his reach?
He took Isidore by the arm and, calling his attention to Raymonde, who was walking in front of them:
“Look at her. When she walks, her figure has a little swing at the waist which I cannot see without quivering. But everything in her gives me that thrill of emotion and love: her movements and her repose, her silence and the sound of her voice. I tell you, the mere fact that I am walking in the track of her footsteps makes me feel in the seventh heaven. Ah, Beautrelet, will she ever forget that I was once Lupin? Shall I ever be able to wipe out from her memory the past which she loathes and detests?” He mastered himself and, with obstinate assurance. “She will forget!” he declared. “She will forget, because I have made every sacrifice for her sake. I have sacrificed the inviolable sanctuary of the Hollow Needle, I have sacrificed my treasures, my power, my pride—I will sacrifice everything—I don’t want to be anything more—but just a man in love—and an honest man, because she can only love an honest man. After all, why should I not be honest? It is no more degrading than anything else!”
The quip escaped him, so to speak, unawares. His voice remained serious and free of all chaff. And he muttered, with restrained violence:
“Ah, Beautrelet, you see, of all the unbridled joys which I have tasted in my adventurous life, there is not one that equals the joy with which her look fills me when she is pleased with me. I feel quite weak then, and I should like to cry—” Was he crying? Beautrelet had an intuition that his eyes were wet with tears. Tears in Lupin’s eyes!—Tears of love!
They were nearing an old gate that served as an entrance to the farm. Lupin stopped for a moment and stammered: