“Your father must have been handsomer than you,” she said, and added, quite low, as if to herself: “He’ll find out what he wants to, your father.” The young man maintained a perverse silence. “How old is your father?” she asked again, smiling at her success in having annoyed him. “Sixty, I think.” “Sixty years. Well, he detests me. If he could, he would suppress me with great pleasure.” “You’re mistaken: he always welcomes you here.” “Oh, those things can be felt. He detests me, and yet he interests me. I’ve always liked characters, myself.” Just before the top of the hill the path turned and disclosed a new view framed between the embankment on the right and the border of shrubs on the left, their leaves half coloured and mingling the green of spring with autumnal gold. Le Nivolet came abruptly into view, with its regular architectural lines and gradients, re-echoing the glory of the vanished sun. The slender thickets that clung to its rocky sides took on a tint of violet like the dregs of wine, while the chain of Margeria behind it showed quite rosy and charming, in its tones of flesh-colour. “See, what a change in the scene,” murmured Maurice, not noticing that his companion paid heed much sooner to the fact of their being alone than to the marvels of the evening light. She halted in their walk, and he turned back toward her. “What’s the matter? Are you tired?” “Oh, no. I’m only giving you time to admire the landscape.” “Would you be jealous?” “Yes, you love your country, and I----” “And you?” “I shan’t say the rest----” “But I’ll say it. I’ll tell you how I love you.” He took her in his arms. She was a thin, dark woman, with large eyes; her flesh firm and her caresses melting. As she turned her head a little he could see, beneath the half-closed and palpitant pupils, that look of black and gold in which all the voluptuous anguish of the season and the hour were reflected. “How little she seems against my breast,” he thought, as he clasped her to him; “a little thing, yet more to me than all the world.” Aloud he murmured: “I love you, Edith.” “Really?” she said, with her same purposed smile. “When will you be mine?” “When I can be only yours.” “But that’s impossible.” “Why? “You are bound.” “We could go away together.” “What should we live on?” “On my dot.” “I couldn’t do that. And, besides, you haven’t the control of it.” “I can take it back.” “No--no!” “You could work.” He was silent. She paid him back in irony, almost in irritation. “Oh, you prefer to mind your father. Well, be like him, then, a big man in a little village, with a lot of children.” She caught an expression of such sadness on his face at this that she blotted it out against her heart. “Oh, I love you,” she cried, “and I torment you. But don’t you see, I’m suffocated here in Chambéry. I want to get away from it, to love you freely, to live. I’ve a horror of falsehood. And you, you don’t love me.”