A silence fell between them.
"I--I don't understand," she said, at last.
"Julie, listen! I shall be three days in Paris, but my business can be perfectly done in one. What if you met me there after to-morrow? What harm would it be? We are not babes, we two. We understand life. And who would have any right to blame or to meddle? Julie, I know a little inn in the valley of the Bièvre, quite near Paris, but all wood and field. No English tourists ever go there. Sometimes an artist or two--but this is not the time of year. Julie, why shouldn't we spend our last two days there--together--away from all the world, before we say good-bye? You've been afraid here of prying people--of the Duchess even--of Madame Bornier--how she scowls at me sometimes! Why shouldn't we sweep all that away--and be happy! Nobody should ever--nobody could ever know." His voice dropped, became still more hurried and soft. "We might go as brother and sister--that would be quite simple. You are practically French. I speak French well. Who is to have an idea, a suspicion of our identity? The spring there is mild and warm. The Bois de Verrières close by is full of flowers. When my father was alive, and I was a child, we went once, to economize, for a year, to a village a mile or two away. But I knew this place quite well. A lovely, green, quiet spot! With your poetical ideas, Julie, you would delight in it. Two days--wandering in the woods--together! Then I put you into the train for Brussels, and I go my way. But to all eternity, Julie, those days will have been ours!"
At the first words, almost, Julie had disengaged herself. Pushing him from her with both hands, she listened to him in a dumb amazement. The color first deserted her face, then returned in a flood.
"So you despise me?" she said, catching her breath.
"No. I adore you."
She fell upon a chair and hid her eyes. He first knelt beside her, arguing and soothing; then he paced up and down before her, talking very fast and low, defending and developing the scheme, till it stood before them complete and tempting in all its details.
Julie did not look up, nor did she speak. At last, Warkworth, full of tears, and stifled with his own emotions, threw open the window again in a craving for air and coolness. A scent of fresh leaves and moistened earth floated up from the shrubbery beneath the window. The scent, the branching trees, the wide, mild spaces of air brought relief. He leaned out, bathing his brow in the night. A tumult of voices seemed to be echoing through his mind, dominated by one which held the rest defiantly in check.
"Is she a mere girl, to be 'led astray'? A moment of happiness--what harm?--for either of us?"
Then he returned to Julie.