I made no answer; she understood my silence. She rose, leaving me on my knees. I threw myself on the sofa and she went to the hearthrug. She knew that what I had asked of her I asked no more. There was a long silence between us. At last she spoke in a very low voice.
"It's only a little sooner than it must have been," she said. "And I--I suppose I must be glad that it's come home to me now instead of--later. I daresay you'll be glad of that too, Augustin."
"How are we to live, how are we to meet, what are we to be to one another?" she broke out the next moment. "We can't go on as if nothing had happened."
"You don't know! Yet you're hard as iron about it. Oh, I daresay you're right; you must be. It's only a little sooner."
She turned her back to me, and stood looking down into the fire. I was trying to answer her question, to realize how it would be between us, how, having lived in the real, we must now dwell in the unreal with one another. I was wondering how I could meet her and not show that I loved her, how I could love her and yet be true to my idol, the conception that governed me. Suddenly she spoke, without turning or lifting her head.
"Wetter mentioned somebody else--besides himself?"
"Hadn't you better send Max? That is, if you think him fit for it."
I thought that she was relieving her petulance by a bitter jest; but a moment later she said again, still without turning round:
I rose and walked slowly to where she stood. Hearing my movement, she faced me.
"Send Max," she said again, holding out her hands toward me, clasped together. "I--I can't stay here like--in the way you say. And you? How could you do it?"
"When I come back," she said, "you will be twenty-five. You will be married to Elsa. I shall be thirty-four. There will be no difficulty about how we are to treat one another when I come back, Augustin."
"My God!" I murmured, looking in her eyes. As I looked they filled with tears.
"My dear, my dear," she said, raising her arms and setting her hands on my shoulders, "I have never forgotten that I was a fool. Yes, once, for a few moments yesterday. I shall remember at Paris what a fool I was, and I shan't forget it when I come back. Only I wish it didn't break one's heart to be a fool."