They were near the little back-gate which led out to the meadows.  Suzanne opened it cautiously:  “No, let us go out,” she said.

XXXV.

THE SHELTER.

  “Is it a chance?  No.  And besides;
  chance, what is it after all but the
  effect of a cause which escapes us?”

  ERCHMAN-CHATRIAN (Contes fantastiques).

As soon as Marcel had recognized Suzanne, he did not take time to reflect, and say to himself: 

“What is it you are going to do, idiot?” He ran downstairs, stumbling like a drunken man, and gently opened the door.  What did he intend?  He did not know.  Was he going to call these women?  He did not know.  He opened his door, that was all, and his thought went no further.

The same morning at church, he had seen Suzanne, and said to himself, “I will not look at her.”  He did not look at her.  He kept his eyes lowered when he turned towards the nave, but he could have said how many times Suzanne lifted hers, if she were joyous or sad, and if she had a red ribbon or a blue ribbon at her neck.

Oh! the eternal contradiction of mankind.  He had not wanted to look at her by day, and here he is throwing himself in her path in the middle of the night.

The steps approached and his heart beat with violence; he was so agitated that, at the moment when the two women passed before his door to reach the lane which led to the bottom of the hill, he could hardly articulate in a hesitating voice: 

“Mademoiselle Durand.”

They uttered a cry.

—­It is I, he said coming forward.  Is it possible?  You here at such an hour and in the rain?

—­I had gone out with my maid, said Suzanne, and the rain has surprised us.

—­Do not go farther.  Shelter yourselves under my door.  It is an April shower; it will soon have passed.

At the same time he went down the steps before the house and took Suzanne’s hand.  Never had he felt such boldness.

—­I pray, Mademoiselle, do not refuse me the pleasure of offering you a refuge for a few moments beneath my humble roof.

Suzanne accepted without making him plead any more.  She went up the stairs and entered the corridor.  The servant followed her.  At the end, on the first steps of the stair-case, a lamp swung to and fro in the wind.

The Cure shut the door again and, passing near the two women, drawn up against the wall, he brushed against the young girl’s damp dress with his hand.

—­But you are wet, Mademoiselle, he said to her.  Perhaps it would not be wise to remain in this cold passage.  Should I dare to ask you to go upstairs an instant, and warm yourself at my fire?

His voice trembled with emotion, and he found that his hand was so near hers that he had only to close his fingers to take Suzanne’s.  He seized it therefore and inflicting on her a gentle violence:  “Go up, I pray, go up,” he said.