She was smiling at him as she had smiled last night with serene and intimate tenderness.
The merciful blankness was over now, pain poured into him, pain so abominable and heart-rending that he cried aloud. He could not bear it. He must not bear it, it was as physical as scorching flame. He saw the way she moved, her dresses and the crystal heart she wore and played with in her delicate hands.
The birds were quiet now, but it was no longer any use their being quiet. He heard instead every tone of her delicious voice, its little soft falls into contralto like the depth of velvet, or its sudden lifting into clear, sweet notes like the chiming of a silver bell. She was horribly near him, the night was full of her, he could even breathe the exquisite faint perfume of her hair.
He flung himself face downwards on the ground.
Oh, to grow into the stupid, painless earth, to feel without sense or sound the slow pulsations of the grass! To lose himself, to forget himself and her!
The sweet, soft night passed over him, hour by hour, until it seemed as if the earth below him turned in sleep. He lifted his face up to the sky. There was no moon and all the stars were small and glimmered far away. At first he thought still that it was the night; and then he knew that the darkness was moving.
The dawn wind rose and sent its stealthy whispering through the trees. The birds awoke and called short, sharp liquid cries of half-awakened love. Then a gust, borne across the speeding darkness, broke in a soft shower of rain. It was the last gift of the retreating night.
Jean stumbled to his feet and crept back to Paris to meet the new, intolerable day.
CHAPTER XXVII
JEAN knew that there was one thing more he had to do, and it seemed to him as if it were the only thing in the world left to him to do. He could procure the four hundred francs for Margot. He found his Uncle Romain in the best of humours; his wife had gone to the country to see her mother for some days, and he felt half-empty Paris delightful.