“My dear fellow, I had nothing to offer Denise.”
“And now that you are much richer than she is, what if she should take her turn at refusing you? Then there’d be no end to it. Lovers have no common sense.”
Instead of taking the road to the village, Auguste could not resist the desire to go by the little wood path where he had kissed the little milkmaid long ago. When he was near the place where Jean le Blanc ran away, he saw a small boy on a donkey in the woods; and a little farther on was a young girl, sitting at the foot of a tree.
“There they are!” cried Auguste.
In a twinkling he had jumped out of the cabriolet; he ran into the woods to where the girl sat, threw himself at her feet, covered her hand with kisses, and said:
“It’s I, Denise; I have come back to you, never to leave you again.”
The girl was in doubt as to whether she was awake; she gazed at Auguste, who was fashionably dressed as in the old days, while Coco ran up to them, saying:
“Here’s my kind friend! he’s dressed like he was the day I broke the bowl.”
“Is it really you?” said Denise. “Oh! if you knew how your letter grieved me! Wicked! to leave me because you were poor! to dare to say that I didn’t love you! that you wouldn’t come to see me again till you had ceased to love me! Is that what your coming now means? Oh! tell me quickly, don’t let me hope for happiness—it is too hard to be cheated out of what one longs for!”
Auguste made no other reply than to press her to his heart, while his eyes told the sweet girl that it was something more than friendship that had brought him back to her.