When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the cart-shed and the stable.  She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books.  Rodolphe settled down there as if at home.  The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.  She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley.

“Someone is coming!” she said.

He blew out the light.

“Have you your pistols?”

“Why?”

“Why, to defend yourself,” replied Emma.

“From your husband?  Oh, poor devil!” And Rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that said, “I could crush him with a flip of my finger.”

She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her.

Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols.  If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of taste.

Besides, she was growing very sentimental.  She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring—­a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union.  She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature.  Then she talked to him of her mother—­hers! and of his mother—­his!  Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago.  Emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon—­

“I am sure that above there together they approve of our love.”

But she was so pretty.  He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness.  This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality.  Emma’s enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him.  Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.

He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.  She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less.

She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more.  The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures.  It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction.  He subjugated her; she almost feared him.