She was terrified at what she foresaw in connection with this name; she was touched at the same time because the argument had reference to love, and was a confidence. Her irritation passed at once. She put her head on her brother's shoulder. The curls of her fair hair intermixed with auburn lay ruffled and disordered against Jean's neck.
"Poor, dear Jean," she murmured. "Fate pursues us. Odile Bastian and the other. Two love affairs which exclude each other! Oh! my poor dear, it is the drama of our family perpetuating itself through us!" She straightened herself, thinking she heard a step, and taking her brother's arm went on nervously: "We cannot talk here, but we must talk about other than merely surface things. If father suddenly came across us, or mamma, who is working in the drawing-room at heaven knows what everlasting piece of embroidery. Ah, my dear, when I think that only a few steps away from her we are exchanging such secrets as these, which she little suspects! But first we must think of ourselves, must we not? Ourselves...!" For a moment she thought of returning to the house, and of going up to her room with Jean. Then she decided on a better place of refuge. "Come into the fields, there no one will disturb us."
Arm-in-arm, hastening their steps, speaking to each other in low tones and short sentences, they went through the gate, passed the end of the enclosure, and to the right of the road, which was higher than the surrounding land; they went down a sloping path, which could be seen like a grey ribbon winding its seemingly endless way through the young corn. Already each of them, after the first moment of surprise, of dejection, and of real pain caused by the thought of what the other would suffer, had come back to thoughts of self.
"Perhaps we are wrong to worry ourselves," said Lucienne, entering the path. "Is it certain that our plans are irreconcilable?"
"Yes. Odile Bastian's mother will never agree to her daughter becoming the sister-in-law of a German officer."
"And how do you know that this officer would not perhaps prefer marrying into a family a little less behind the times than ours?" said Lucienne, hurt. "Your plan may also injure mine."
"Pardon me; I know Farnow—nothing will stop him."
"To tell the truth, I think so too!" said the young girl, looking up, and blushing with pride.
"He is one of those who are never in the wrong."
"Exactly so."