"What time is it?" she asked.

Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side

of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying-"Nearly three."

"Ahl thanks, thanks!"

For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,

perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the

nurse to run to her house to fetch him.

"Be quick!"

"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!"

She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.

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Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she already

saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three bank-notes on his

bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to

Bovary. What should it be?

The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock

in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time.

She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path

by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have

come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears

that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here

a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and

stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken

Mere Rollet said to her-"There is no one at your house!"

"What?"

"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they're

looking for you."

Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about

her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back

instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and

uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of lightning in

a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so

generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she

would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a

single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not

seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while

ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.




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