“You here at this hour, Saval!  Has some accident happened to you?”

“No, my girl,” he replied; “but go and tell your mistress that I want to speak to her at once.”

“The fact is madame is preserving pears for the winter, and she is in the preserving room.  She is not dressed, you understand.”

“Yes, but go and tell her that I wish to see her on a very important matter.”

The little servant went away, and Saval began to walk, with long, nervous strides, up and down the drawing-room.  He did not feel in the least embarrassed, however.  Oh! he was merely going to ask her something, as he would have asked her about some cooking recipe.  He was sixty-two years of age!

The door opened and madame appeared.  She was now a large woman, fat and round, with full cheeks and a sonorous laugh.  She walked with her arms away from her sides and her sleeves tucked up, her bare arms all covered with fruit juice.  She asked anxiously: 

“What is the matter with you, my friend?  You are not ill, are you?”

“No, my dear friend; but I wish to ask you one thing, which to me is of the first importance, something which is torturing my heart, and I want you to promise that you will answer me frankly.”

She laughed, “I am always frank.  Say on.”

“Well, then.  I have loved you from the first day I ever saw you.  Can you have any doubt of this?”

She responded, laughing, with something of her former tone of voice.

“Great goose! what ails you?  I knew it from the very first day!”

Saval began to tremble.  He stammered out:  “You knew it?  Then . . .”

He stopped.

She asked: 

“Then?”

He answered: 

“Then—­what did you think?  What—­what—­what would you have answered?”

She broke into a peal of laughter.  Some of the juice ran off the tips of her fingers on to the carpet.

“What?”

“I?  Why, you did not ask me anything.  It was not for me to declare myself!”

He then advanced a step toward her.

“Tell me—­tell me . . . .  You remember the day when Sandres went to sleep on the grass after lunch . . . when we had walked together as far as the bend of the river, below . . .”

He waited, expectantly.  She had ceased to laugh, and looked at him, straight in the eyes.

“Yes, certainly, I remember it.”

He answered, trembling all over: 

“Well—­that day—­if I had been—­if I had
been—­venturesome—­what would you have done?”

She began to laugh as only a happy woman can laugh, who has nothing to regret, and responded frankly, in a clear voice tinged with irony: 

“I would have yielded, my friend.”

She then turned on her heels and went back to her jam-making.