"To anything, to any one I care for."
"Not to me. What you have told me is the key to his expression when he looks at me. If he is devoted to you it is not an unreasoning devotion, and he is judging me poisonous to you. As he has himself been hurt, he will not have you hurt. I wish he had never come. I wish he might never be my driver to the river, and your friend, and our enemy."
"f.a.n.n.y!"
"I wish it. I am unhappy about him, and unhappiness is always punished.
While we were in Metz every one smiled at us; here every one will spy us out, scold, frown, punish--"
"And your magic luck?"
"Alfred threatens my luck," she said. Then, with another look, "Are you angry with me? Can you love such a character?"
"I love it now."
"You have never heard me when I scold, or cry or am sulky?..."
"Never."
"But if I make the experiment?"
"I could make a hundred experiments, but I make none of them. We cannot know what to-morrow may bring."
This she remembered suddenly with all her heart.
"Come nearer to me, f.a.n.n.y. Why are you sitting so far away?"
She sat down nearer to him; she put all her fingers tightly round his wrist.
"I am not always sure that you are there, Julien; that you exist."
"Yet I am substantial enough."
"No, you are most phantom-like. It is the thought of parting that checks my earnestness; as though I had an impulse to save myself. It is the thought of parting that turns you into a ghost, already parted with; that sheds a light of unreality over you when I am distant. Something in me makes ready for that parting, flees from you, and I cannot stay it, steals itself, and I cannot break through it. I have known you so short a time. I have had nothing but pleasure from you; isn"t it possible that I can escape without pain?"
"Is it?"
"No, no, no!" She laid her cheek upon his hand. "Do something to make it easier. Must it be that when you go you go completely? Promise me at least that it will be gradual, that you will try to see me when you have taken up your other life."
"But if I can"t? If you are ordered back to Metz?"
"Why should I be? But, if I am, promise me that you will try. If it is only an artifice, beguile me with it; I will believe in any promise."
"You don"t need to ask me to promise; you know you don"t need to make me promise. Wherever you are sent I will try to come. _Wherever_--do you hear? Do you think that that "other" life is a dragon to eat me up? That it will be such bliss to me that I shall forget you completely? It isn"t to be bliss, but work, hard work, and compet.i.tion. It is the work that will keep me to Paris, not my happiness, my gaiety, my content with other faces. That would comfort me if I were listener, and you the speaker. But, f.a.n.n.y, f.a.n.n.y, I never met any one with such joy as you--it is you who change the forest and the inns we meet in, make the journeys a miracle. Don"t show me another face. We have been in love without a cloud, without scenes, without tears. You have laughed at everything.
Don"t change, don"t show me someone whom I don"t know; _not that sad face_!"
"This then!" She held up a face in whose eyes and smile was the hasty radiance his fervour had brought her--and at sight of it the words broke from him--"Are you happy so quickly?"
"Yes, yes, already happy."
"Because I speak aloud of what I feel? What a doubting heart you have within you! And I believe you only pretend to distress yourself, that you may test whether I am sensitive enough to show the reflection of it.
Come! Well--am I right?"
"Partly. But I need not think. Oh, I am glad your feeling is so like mine, and mine like yours! I will let the parting take care of itself --yet there is one thing about which I cannot tell. What does your heart do in absence, what kind of man are you when there is no one but Alfred, who will say: "Forget her"?"
"What kind do you think?"
"While I am here beside you, you cannot even imagine how dim I might become. Can I tell? Can you a.s.sure me?"
Dim she might become to him, but dim she was not now as she besought him with eyes that showed a quick and eager heart, eyes fixed on his face full of enquiry, sure of its answer, feigning doubt that did not distress her.
"And I to you, and I to you?" he said, speaking in her ear when he had made her an answer. "Dim, too? Why do we never talk of your inconstancy?
We must discuss it."
"Inconstancy! That word had not occurred to me. It was _your_ forgetfulness that I dreaded."
"I shall not be unforgetful until I am inconstant."
"Julien!"
"My love!"
"You can afford to tease me now you have me in such a mood!"
"In such a mood! Have I, indeed? Yet you will forget me before I forget you."
"You tell me to my face that I shall change?" she asked.
"Yes. And since you are bound to forget me, I insist at least that there shall be a reason for doing so. I would rather be a king dethroned than allowed to lapse like a poor idiot."
"You would? You can say that?" Her voice rose.
"One instant, f.a.n.n.y. Even when my teasing is out of taste, learn to distinguish it from what I say in earnest. My dear, my dear, why should you have to listen to the matter of _my_ philosophy and _my_ experience which tells me all creatures forget and are forgotten! No! I wipe out!
You will not vanish--"
The door opened and Alfred entered the room.
"The car is ready," he said. "I have had trouble in getting here."
f.a.n.n.y turned to him. "I am ready," she said. "It is dreadful to have to trouble you to take me so late at night to the river."
"No, no--" Alfred, glowing from the exercise in the snowy night outside, was inclined to be more friendly, or at least less sparing of his words.
"Here are some letters that were at your lodging." He handed three to Julien.
"When do you dine with me again?" Julien, holding the letters, placed his hand upon her shoulder.
"I cannot tell what the work will be. Perhaps little, as the snow is deep."
"It is snowing again outside," said Alfred.