He made a negligent gesture toward the right, but instead of following the movement of his arm, she turned toward him, and was aghast to find his face so full of anguish. She understood. For herself she could view like a passing tourist these lofty beauties of nature’s mood. Her companion did not feel it thus. Was it not his own land’s supreme attempt to hold him back? Down there he could see La Vigie, and memories of his childhood, of a childhood all clean and pure, rose up from the earth like birds and came to him. Nearer, as he could tell from the vicinity of the castle, was “The House,” that place which each of us calls, just like that, “the house,” as if there were but one in the world. She followed this last conflict that showed in Maurice’s eyes with a sort of envy, she who had nothing to give up herself. With a sigh she touched him on the shoulder. “Listen,” she said, “let me go away alone.” But he was uncomfortable at being detected in the most hidden and instinctive impulses of his soul. “No, no! You don’t love me, then, any more?” “As if I didn’t!” She smiled at him, with an infinitely tender smile that he did not see. The fires in her eyes grew veiled. A woman of to-day, keen for sincerity and the individual life, grown suddenly impatient after nine years of silent waiting, she had decided, cost what it might, to take advantage of her husband’s temporary absence and escape out of the prison house of her marriage. Her romantic departure had been carefully prepared in all its practical details, and in its chosen hour. Maurice’s irritation with his father favoured her plan and left him almost at her mercy. And yet now, how could she best testify to her great love for Maurice? By associating him with her in her inevitable and dangerous destiny, or, better still, by leaving him here in his native place? Before her love for him she could not bear her life. He had, without knowing it, fanned the spirit of revolt in her. How could she separate herself from him? The offer she had just made him broke her very heart, and yet she insisted on it. Never before had she been so conscious of the detachment from herself which passion now and then lets loose on us, as a humid plain is burned dry by the devouring sun. “One thing at a time, slowly,” she replied, “you would forget me. Don’t protest. Listen to me. You are so young. All your life is before you. Let me go alone.” But he revolted against this injurious condescension. What was to keep him back? Had not his reason--the reasoning of twenty-four--shown the right of every one to seek his own happiness? “I don’t want life without you,” he protested. “I will stay,” she said again, “if you prefer it. I shall learn to tell better lies, you’ll see. When one is in love all wrongs are right for the sake of love.” It was a proposal made too late. This time she knew, and watched for a refusal. It came, and she threw herself against her lover’s breast.