As she came near, Jean took off his hat and stood up a little on the other side of the hedge. And she who walked between two walls of blossoms, although she was gazing upwards, turned her head, her glance still full of the spring which had excited her.
"Oh, is that you?" she said.
And she came at once across the strip of grass where the cherry-trees were planted, up to the place in the hedge where Jean was.
"I cannot come to you freely as I used to," he said, "so I came to wait for you. I have a favour to ask of you...."
"A favour? And you say that so seriously!" She tried to smile, but her lips refused. They had both become pale.
"I am going," said Jean, as if he was making a grave declaration; "I am going up to Sainte Odile the day after to-morrow—I shall go to hear the bells ring in Easter. If you also asked for permission to come——"
"You have made a vow?"
He answered:
"Something like it. I must speak to you—to you alone."
Odile withdrew slightly. With something of fear in her look she was trying to find out if Jean was speaking the truth—if she had guessed aright. He was watching her in an agony of anxiety. They were motionless, trembling, and so near and yet so far from each other that one would have said that they were threatening each other. And in fact both felt that the peace of their lives was at stake. They were not children, but a man and a woman of a strong and passionate race. All the powers of their being asserted themselves and broke through the hackneyed commonplaces of custom, because in these simple words, "I must speak to you," Odile had heard the breath of a soul which was giving itself, and which demanded a return.