I sat down on the couch.  Unwillingly?  Yes.  I was at that stage when all her words, all her gestures, all her silences were a heavy trial to me, put a stress on my resolution, on that fidelity to myself and to her which lay like a leaden weight on my untried heart.  But I didn’t sit down very far away from her, though that soft and billowy couch was big enough, God knows!  No, not very far from her.  Self-control, dignity, hopelessness itself, have their limits.  The halo of her tawny hair stirred as I let myself drop by her side.  Whereupon she flung one arm round my neck, leaned her temple against my shoulder and began to sob; but that I could only guess from her slight, convulsive movements because in our relative positions I could only see the mass of her tawny hair brushed back, yet with a halo of escaped hair which as I bent my head over her tickled my lips, my cheek, in a maddening manner.

We sat like two venturesome children in an illustration to a tale, scared by their adventure.  But not for long.  As I instinctively, yet timidly, sought for her other hand I felt a tear strike the back of mine, big and heavy as if fallen from a great height.  It was too much for me.  I must have given a nervous start.  At once I heard a murmur:  “You had better go away now.”

I withdrew myself gently from under the light weight of her head, from this unspeakable bliss and inconceivable misery, and had the absurd impression of leaving her suspended in the air.  And I moved away on tiptoe.

Like an inspired blind man led by Providence I found my way out of the room but really I saw nothing, till in the hall the maid appeared by enchantment before me holding up my overcoat.  I let her help me into it.  And then (again as if by enchantment) she had my hat in her hand.

“No.  Madame isn’t happy,” I whispered to her distractedly.

She let me take my hat out of her hand and while I was putting it on my head I heard an austere whisper: 

“Madame should listen to her heart.”

Austere is not the word; it was almost freezing, this unexpected, dispassionate rustle of words.  I had to repress a shudder, and as coldly as herself I murmured: 

“She has done that once too often.”

Rose was standing very close to me and I caught distinctly the note of scorn in her indulgent compassion.

“Oh, that! . . .  Madame is like a child.”  It was impossible to get the bearing of that utterance from that girl who, as Dona Rita herself had told me, was the most taciturn of human beings; and yet of all human beings the one nearest to herself.  I seized her head in my hands and turning up her face I looked straight down into her black eyes which should have been lustrous.  Like a piece of glass breathed upon they reflected no light, revealed no depths, and under my ardent gaze remained tarnished, misty, unconscious.

“Will Monsieur kindly let me go.  Monsieur shouldn’t play the child, either.” (I let her go.) “Madame could have the world at her feet.  Indeed she has it there only she doesn’t care for it.”