The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.

When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of breath.  As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly.

“It is I again!” said Leon.

“I was sure of it!”

She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar.  She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.

“The doctor is not here?” he went on.

“He is out.”  She repeated, “He is out.”

Then there was silence.  They looked at one another and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts.

“I should like to kiss Berthe,” said Leon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.

He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything.  But she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string.  Leon kissed her several times on the neck.

“Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!” And he gave her back to her mother.

“Take her away,” she said.

They remained alone—­Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh.

“It is going to rain,” said Emma.

“I have a cloak,” he answered.

“Ah!”

She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward.

The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one’s being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself.

“Well, good-bye,” he sighed.

She raised her head with a quick movement.

“Yes, good-bye—­go!”

They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.

“In the English fashion, then,” she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.

Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm.  Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.

When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds.  He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall.  Leon set off running.

From afar he saw his employer’s gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse.  Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking.  They were waiting for him.