At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her hands
through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big
tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little
Rodolphe!"
Midnight struck.
"Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!"
He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for
their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air-"You have the passports?"
"Yes."
"You are forgetting nothing?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Certainly."
"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at
midday?"
He nodded.
"Till to-morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she watched him
go.
He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's
edge between the bulrushes-"To-morrow!" she cried.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across
the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white
gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with
such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should
fall.
"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! She
was a pretty mistress!"
And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love,
came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against
her.
"For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile
myself--have a child on my hands."
He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand
times no! That would be too stupid."