She asked herself as she walked along, "What am I going to say?
How shall I begin?" And as she went on she recognised the thickets, the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the chateau yonder. All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.
She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees.
They were swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought out no one.
She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which several doors in a row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in.
He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe.
"What! it is you!" he said, getting up hurriedly.
"Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice."
And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her lips.
"You have not changed; you are charming as ever!"
"Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you disdained them."
Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.
She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the honour, the very life of a third person.
"No matter!" she said, looking at him sadly. "I have suffered much."
He replied philosophically--
"Such is life!"
"Has life," Emma went on, "been good to you at least, since our separation?"
"Oh, neither good nor bad."
"Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted."
"Yes, perhaps."
"You think so?" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. "Oh, Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!"
It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she said to him--
"How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!"
For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten--
"You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we'll begin again, won't we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh, speak!"
And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.
He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.
"Why, you have been crying! What for?"
She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of her love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of resistance, and then he cried out--
"Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!" He was kneeling by her.
"Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs."
"But--but--" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave expression.
"You know," she went on quickly, "that my husband had placed his whole fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don't pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs, we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I have come to you."
"Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she came for." At last he said with a calm air--
"Dear madame, I have not got them."
He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and most destructive.
First she looked at him for some moments.
"You have not got them!" she repeated several times. "You have not got them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me. You are no better than the others."
She was betraying, ruining herself.
Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was "hard up" himself.
"Ah! I pity you," said Emma. "Yes--very much."
And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its panoply, "But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on the butt of one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell," she went on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, "nor silver-gilt whistles for one's whips," and she touched them, "nor charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself; you live well.
You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that," she cried, taking up two studs from the mantelpiece, "but the least of these trifles, one can get money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!"