The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly.  Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face.  Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his breast.

Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass.  Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water.

It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye.  Then Emma cried.  She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe.  Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.

“What is the matter with you?” she said.  “Are you ill?  Tell me!”

At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent—­that she was compromising herself.

Chapter Ten

Gradually Rodolphe’s fears took possession of her.  At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond.  But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed.  When she came back from his house she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen.  She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.

One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her.  It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch.  Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box.  He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose.  It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks.

“You ought to have called out long ago!” he exclaimed; “When one sees a gun, one should always give warning.”

The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up.  But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness.  At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation.

“It isn’t warm; it’s nipping.”

Emma answered nothing.  He went on—­

“And you’re out so early?”