Then she raised her head to look at him again:
He did not fail to let her know that, as soon as he heard of their misfortune, he had hastened to their house.
She had seen him in the street outside the house, and had hidden herself.
Then, in a trembling voice, and with long pauses between her words:
"I was afraid! Yes--afraid of you and of myself!"
This disclosure gave him, as it were, a shock of voluptuous joy. His heart began to throb wildly. She went on:
"Excuse me for not having come sooner." And, pointing towards the little pocket-book covered with golden palm-branches:
"I embroidered it on your account expressly. It contains the amount for which the Belleville property was given as security."
Frederick thanked her for letting him have the money, while chiding her at the same time for having given herself any trouble about it.
"No! 'tis not for this I came! I was determined to pay you this visit--then I would go back there again."
And she spoke about the place where they had taken up their abode.
It was a low-built house of only one story; and there was a garden attached to it full of huge box-trees, and a double avenue of chestnut-trees, reaching up to the top of the hill, from which there was a view of the sea.
"I go there and sit down on a bench, which I have called 'Frederick's bench.'"
Then she proceeded to fix her gaze on the furniture, the objects of virtù, the pictures, with eager intentness, so that she might be able to carry away the impressions of them in her memory. The Maréchale's portrait was half-hidden behind a curtain. But the gilding and the white spaces of the picture, which showed their outlines through the midst of the surrounding darkness, attracted her attention.
"Impossible!" said Frederick. "It is an old Italian painting."
She confessed that she would like to take a walk through the streets on his arm.
The light from the shop-windows fell, every now and then, on her pale profile; then once more she was wrapped in shadow, and in the midst of the carriages, the crowd, and the din, they walked on without paying any heed to what was happening around them, without hearing anything, like those who make their way across the fields over beds of dead leaves.