She did not see him until he was close to her, where she sat on a low stone wall, the woman standing in front of her. When she did so, her face spoke for her; it said what Nadine Napraxine’s had never said. The emotion of joy and timidity mingled touched him keenly in that moment, when he, with his millions of gold and of friends, had so strongly realised his own loneliness.
‘She loves me as much as she dare—as much as she can, without being conscious of it,’ he thought, as he paused beside her. She did not speak, she did not move; but her colour changed and her breath came quickly. She had slipped off the wall and stood irresolute, as though inclined to run away, the glossy leaves and the starry blossoms of the trees consecrated to virginity were all above her and around her. She glanced at him with an indefinite fear; she fancied he was angered by the return of the casket; he looked paler and sterner than she had ever seen him look.
He paused a moment and said some commonplace word.
Then he saw that her eyes were wet with tears, and that she had been crying.
‘What is the matter?’ he said, gently. ‘Has anything vexed you?’
‘They are sending her away,’ said Nicole Sandroz, with indignant tears in her own eyes, finding that she did not reply for herself. ‘They are sending her to the Vosges, where, as Monsieur knows very well, I make no doubt, the very hares and wolves are frozen in the woods at this month of the year.’
‘Are you indeed going away?’ he asked of Yseulte herself.
She did not speak: she made a little affirmative gesture.
‘Why is that? Bois le Roy, in this season, will be a cruel prison for you.’
‘My cousin wishes it,’ said the girl; she spoke with effort; she did not wish to cry before him; the memory of all that her cousin had said that morning was with her in merciless distinctness.