Buteau did not flinch from his rigid attitude. Then Rose, in her turn, tried to soothe him.
"Why, you are just as much cared for as the others, silly! You're only quarrelling with your bread and butter. Accept!"
"No!" And then off he went, going up to bed.
Outside, Lise and Françoise, aghast at the scene, walked a few steps in silence. They had again taken one another's waist, and their figures mingled, looking quite black against the snow which glimmered through the night. Jean, who followed them, also in silence, presently heard them crying. He then tried to cheer them up.
"Come, come, he'll think better of it; he'll say yes to-morrow."
"Ah, you don't know him!" cried Lise. "He'd be cut to pieces sooner than give way. No, no, it's all over!"
"Well, it'll have to come any way," murmured Françoise.
This made them laugh. But their spirits were too low, and they began to cry again.
When Jean had seen them to their door he made the best of his way across the plain. It had left off snowing; the sky was once more clear and bright; a wide, star-spangled, frosty sky it was, shedding a crystalline blue light; and La Beauce extended afar, quite white, and level and still like a sea of ice. Not a breath came from the distant horizon; he heard nothing but the tramp of his own thick shoes on the hard soil. 'Twas a deep calm, the peacefulness of the cold. All that Jean had read was whirling in his brain. He took off his cap to cool himself, feeling an oppression behind his ears, and wishing to escape from thought. The idea of that girl with child and her sister annoyed him too. The tramp of his thick shoes still rang out. Then a shooting-star started down the sky, furrowing it with fire in its silent flight.
Over there, the farm of La Borderie was vanishing from sight, hardly forming as much as a bump on the white expanse of snow; and as soon as Jean had entered the cross-path, he remembered the field he had sown in the vicinity some days before. Looking to the left, he recognised it under the winding-sheet that covered it. The layer of snow, of the lightness and purity of ermine, was a thin one, leaving the crests of the furrows apparent, and but imperfectly veiling the earth's benumbed limbs. How soundly must the seeds be sleeping! How deep a rest in those icy flanks until the warm morn, when the Spring sun would again awaken them to life!