She sat down on a rock which was bathed in sunlight, and spread the flowers on her lap, taking up the sprays of lilies one by one. I inhaled the musky perfume of these pale racemes, seated on the other extremity of the stone. Never had this creature, toward whom all my thoughts had tended for months, appeared so adorably delicate and refined as at this moment with her face daintily colored by the fresh air, with the deep red of her lips which were bent in a half-smile, with the clear limpidity of her gray eyes, with the symmetry of her entire being.
She harmonized in a manner almost supernatural with the country about us by the charm of youth which emanated from her person. The longer I looked at her the more I was convinced that if I did not seize this occasion to tell her what I had wished to declare for so long a time, I should never again find another opportunity so propitious.
This idea grew in my mind, mingled with the remorse of seeing her, so confident, so unsuspicious of the patient work by which, abusing our daily intimacy, I had brought her to treat me with a gentleness almost fraternal.
My heart beat violently. The magic of her presence excited my entire being. Unfortunately she turned toward me for a moment, to show me the bouquet which was nearly finished. No doubt she saw in my face the trace of the emotion which my pride of thought raised in me, for her face which had been so joyous, so frank, suddenly grew anxious. I ought to say that during our conversations of these two months we had avoided, she from delicacy, I from shrewdness, any allusion to the romance of deception by which I had tried to excite her pity. I understood how thoroughly she had believed in this romance and that she had not ceased to think of it, when she said with an involuntary melancholy in her eyes:
“Why do you spoil this beautiful day by sad remembrances? I thought you had become more reasonable.”
“No!” I responded; “you do not know what makes me sad. Ah! it is not remembrances. You refer to my former griefs. You are mistaken. There is no more place in my mind for memories than there is on these branches for last year’s leaves.”
I heard my voice as if it had been that of some one else, at the same time I read in her eyes that, in spite of the poetical comparison by which I had concealed the direct meaning of this phrase, she understood me.
How was it that what had been so impossible now seemed easy? How was it that I dared to do what I had believed I should never dare to do? I took her hand which trembled in mine as if the child were seized with a frightful terror. She rose to go away, but her knees trembled so that I had no difficulty in constraining her to sit down again. I was so overcome by my own audacity that I could not control myself, and I began to tell her my feelings for her in words which I cannot recall now.
All the emotions through which I had passed, since my arrival at the château, yes all, even from the most detestable, those of my envy of Count André, to the best, my remorse at abusing the confidence of a young girl, were dissolved in an adoration almost mystical, and half-mad, for this trembling, agitated, and beautiful creature. I saw her while I was speaking grow as pale as the flowers which were scattered in her lap. I remember that words came to me which were excited to madness, wild to imprudence, and that I ended by repeating:
“How I love you! Ah! How I love you!”