“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” she said, “and my life was over.” “I was detained, Edith.” He was so obviously upset that she could not reproach him. She took him by the hand and led him round to the other side of the chapel, where she showed him the lush grass, and a protecting shadow. “Let’s sit down, shall we? It’s not cold. We shall be all right.” They ensconced themselves side by side there, leaning against the wall of the shrine, which shut them out from Chambéry and the world. They could see nothing in front of them but the peaks of Nivolet in the full sunlight. She twined herself caressingly round him. “I love you so much,” she murmured plaintively. Was not their love delicious and dolorous both at once? They called each other by endearing terms, and yet they were not lovers. She held herself away a little to get a better look at him. “You have been unhappy. Was it on my account?” He reviewed his scene with his father briefly, telling of his discovery of their infatuation, and of the still greater difficulties it implied for their future. “What’s to become of us?” he asked. “Yes, what is to become of us?” she repeated. “Our secret is no longer ours, and I, well, I don’t know how to hide it any longer.” “Our secret is no longer ours,” he repeated bitterly, “and you, you have never yet been mine.” She leaned her head on the young man’s breast and yielded purposefully to him, lulling him like a child, the wheedling tones of her voice striking on his heart strings like fingers on the keys of a piano. “How dare you say I am not yours? When have I refused myself to you, you bad boy? Will you go away from here with me? I am all yours. But you are so young, and I shall be thirty very soon. Thirty years, and my love, which is my whole life, began only a few months ago. I looked at you, and there was sunlight on you, and I crept out of the shadows to be with you. One day I’ll tell you about my childhood, my youth and marriage, and I shall tell it so as to see your tears.” “Edith!” “Ah, yes! People who find marriage the gate to light and gladness, and not the door to a prison, have a fine time of it scorning our frailty. When fate overtakes them, too, do they get any more than we deserve? But they don’t ever ask themselves that question. Happiness is due them as a matter of course. They don’t even do anything to protect it, and if they happen to lose it, they call it just their bad luck, anybody’s fault but their own.” “Edith! I love you, and you’re not happy.” She half raised herself, and took his face in her hands, with an adoring gesture. “Give me one year of your life for the whole of mine, Will you? Come! Let us go away, let us forget--I don’t want to lie any more--I don’t want to belong to any one else. I can’t any more, now that I’m yours.” She stood up with one bound. Behind the chapel, not far from them, the rock fell perpendicularly to the Aix road. She went up close to the edge, defying the empty air.