He knew what he wanted. He resisted like a decent fellow. But a decent fellow is a man. He should not play with fire.
One Sunday in May the four of them, Sylvie, Annette, Leopold and little Marc, went for a walk in the direction of Sceaux. After an hour of strolling, Sylvie, who was a little tired, sat down at the foot of a slope and said, "Well, young people, climb it if you want to! You will find us still here."
She remained behind with the child. Annette and Leopold went gaily on. Annette was animated, joyous, the best of company. Leopold, with his jolly talk, eased the moral tension in which Julien's love and his intellectual conversation held her. The path wound between the long wall of a great estate and a rise of ground covered with flowering bushes. Through the holes in the hedges they saw, as they climbed, the sloping orchards with their white and pink tufts.
A fantastic sky, with the busy clouds racing over its delicate blue. The laughing wind, like a young dog, bit them by fits and starts. Annette was walking ahead, picking flowers, singing. Leopold was following her; he watched her bending over, watched her robust frame under the tightly fitting dress, her bare hands, her bare neck, reddened by the lash of the wind, and amid the foaming hair the red shell of her ear, the tip of which looked like a drop of blood. The slope rose again to the right, and the road formed a passage in which the rushing wind streamed down upon them. Annette, without turning, asked her companion a question. He did not reply. She went on, bending over, picking flowers and talking. And as she joked with Leopold, who was silent, it suddenly occurred to her that there was something dangerous in this silence. She let her flowers fall. She straightened herself, but she did not have time to turn when . . . she almost fell. He had clasped her in his arms. She had been brutally seized, and she felt on her neck a panting breath. An eager mouth was kissing her throat, her cheeks. Instantly stiffening, bracing herself, with all her unconscious fighting forces collected, with her chest and her spine she furiously shook the man who had seized her: she broke his hold and found herself face to face with the aggressor. Her eyes flamed with anger, but he did not relax his grip. A rough struggle followed, like that of animals that hate each other. Rough and brief. Annette, whose outraged instincts gave her an added strength, violently repulsed the man, and he tripped and stumbled. He remained there before her, doubly humiliated, panting, scarlet, and they looked at each other with rage in their eyes. Not a word was said. Suddenly Annette clambered up the bank, crept through a hole in the hedge to the other side, and fled. Leopold, who had come to his senses, called after her. She stopped twenty paces away and would not let him approach. They redescended the hill on different sides of the hedge, keeping their distances, on their guard, hostile and ashamed. Leopold, in a changed voice, implored Annette to come back, begged her pardon. Annette turned a deaf ear towards him, but she heard him: the confusion of this voice reached her through the barrier of her bitterness. She slackened her pace.
"Annette!" he besought her. "Annette! Don't run away! I don't want to pursue you. See, I'm staying here, I shan't come near you. I've behaved like a brute. I'm ashamed, ashamed. Call me any names you like, but don't run away. I shall never touch you again, not even with the tip of my finger. I'm disgusted with myself. I ask your pardon on my knees!"
He knelt down awkwardly on the pebbles. He looked utterly wretched. He was ridiculous.
Annette, who was listening to him in cold silence, motionless, with her face turned away, threw him a side-glance without looking at him. She saw this humiliated man. She was touched by his humiliation; her warm heart had the faculty of opening to the emotions of others as if they were her own, and she blushed at Leopold's shame. She made a movement towards him and said, "Get up!"
He rose, and she instinctively recoiled a few steps. "You are still afraid," he said. "You will never forgive me."
"Don't speak of it any more," she answered dryly. "It's ended."
They descended the road again. Annette was dumb and frozen. He had difficulty in keeping silent. He was mortified, and he was trying to justify himself. But he was not very eloquent, the poor man. His style was not exactly noble. "I am a dirty cur!" he repeated angrily.