Before the words had passed her lips he had suddenly seen a vision of Paule in her mourning dress. Isabelle felt instinctively what was passing in his mind. Jealously she came nearer and in her most seductive voice said: “What about my commission? Have you forgotten it?” She offered her lips. He remembered, and as the colors of the dying day mingled he gave her the promised commission under the trees. Marcel never looked back till he arrived at the ascent to Le Maupas. There he turned round and saw La Chênaie lying in the shadow, while the mountains were still splendid in the light. A long, fleecy cloud trailed half way up their sides like a torn scarf. From the dying sun they caught a tint of rose so fine and delicate that it brought to the mind’s eye a goddess of the Alps half hidden amid gauze and muslin. He gave himself the cruel satisfaction of waiting till the shadows, falling on the mountain tops, had destroyed this airy fantasy and blotted out these delicate colors. In the sadness of surrounding nature he seemed to breathe more freely. Quickly he crossed the half-stripped wood, through whose trunks patches of fiery red sky could be seen. Round him the owls, those sinister birds of night and autumn, began to call to each other with their mournful screams, like the agonising shrieks of victims, which strike terror into the hearts of belated travellers. He found his sister at the gate. Feeling anxious about him, she had come to meet him. Paule knew at a glance the result of the interview. “Oh,” was all she said. In a word he told her. “We are not of the same race,” he said. She took his arm and was bending forward to kiss him when she stopped. “Listen,” she said. “Owls! The wood is full of them, Marcel. Let us go away. They make me shudder. The peasants say they are a sign of death.” He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. CHAPTER X MARCEL’S DEPARTURE A family meal before a departure reminds us in its sadness of the first meal we have together after the final disappearance of an habitual guest. If no one is missing as yet, still joy has fled. Everyone tries vainly to brighten it, and of this touching, fruitless effort is born a deeper sadness. Thus the dining-room at Le Maupas, in spite of the October sun which shone into it, was silent and mournful. Marcel was going away at nightfall in Trélaz’s carriage to catch the six o’clock train at the station. When the conversation languished nobody thought of taking it up again. With a few unimportant words, spoken without enthusiasm, it would falter back to life, only to die out once more. Marie, the old servant, had prepared Marcel’s favorite dishes. Carrying them back to the kitchen almost untouched, she murmured in a cross voice which expressed her own sorrow: “It isn’t right--it isn’t right. They want to starve themselves to death!” After lunch, Marcel went out with his sister.