Part 17 (2/2)
”I thought that would never be brought up again. I wish you to forget what you said to me.” She stood still a moment, with a pensive look on her beautiful face, and then she added, in a m.u.f.fled voice: ”And, above all, I wish to forget it myself.”
Her eyelids were lowered, and her eyelashes were beating quickly against her pink cheeks throwing a strange shadow over her brilliant complexion.
Giraud went up to her, anxious and excited, and in a stammering voice he asked:
”Is it true what you have just said? Do you still remember that moment of madness? Can you think of it without anger?”
”Yes,” she answered, gazing full at him with her beautiful blue eyes, ”I think of it without anger,” and then, in such a low voice that he could scarcely hear it, she murmured, ”and I _do_ think of it all the time!” Then, with a sudden change of expression, she began again hurriedly: ”It is you who must forget now; you must forget at once--what I ought never to have said to you! Please forget it! Do as I ask you, for my sake!”
”Forget? How do you think that I can forget? You know well enough that it is absolutely impossible!”
”You must, though!” she persisted. ”Yes, you must say to yourself that you--that we have had a dream--a very bright, happy dream,--one of those sort from which one wakes up happy, and, at the same time, troubled; a dream in which one has a vision of beautiful things, which disappear, and which we cannot possibly define. Have you never had such dreams? One cannot, no matter how much one tries, remember all about them; and yet--one likes them.”
Her voice, with its caressing intonation, completely unnerved the young man. He had taken his seat again mechanically at the table, and, without replying, he looked up at Bijou, his eyes full of tears.
She came nearer, and said in a beseeching tone:
”Ah! please don't, if you only knew how wretched it makes me--” and then she added abruptly: ”and if it is any consolation to you--you can say to yourself that you are not the only one to suffer--for I do, too.”
”Is it really, really true?” he asked, bewildered with his happiness.
Denyse did not answer. She had just noticed on the table a letter, which Giraud had been finis.h.i.+ng when she entered the room.
”I was writing to my brother,” he said, following the direction of her eyes, ”and instead of telling him about my pupil, and my occupations, and, in short, about such things as, in my position of life, I ought to confine myself to, I have only told him about you.”
”I was looking at your name,” she answered, pointing with her rosy finger to the signature; ”Fred--it is a name I am fond of; I gave it to my little G.o.dchild, the youngest of Bertrade's children.” She seemed to be looking far away through the open window as she repeated very gently: ”Fred!” And then pa.s.sing her little hand over her forehead, and walking towards the door, she said abruptly: ”And this dinner--and my flowers for the table,--why, the _menus_ are not written yet, and it is five o'clock!” And then, as the poor fellow looked stupefied and did not attempt to move, she went on: ”It's settled about this evening, is it not? I shall have your place laid?”
He answered, in a vague, bewildered way, coming gradually to himself again:
”Amongst all the others in dress-coats, I shall cut the most ridiculous figure.”
”Oh, no,--nothing of the kind! Besides, they will not all be in dress-coats. First of all, there is M. de Clagny in a frock-coat; and then M. de Bernes, who is afraid of meeting his General, and so is always arrayed in his uniform: then the abbe in his ca.s.sock,” and with a laugh she concluded: ”That makes three of them who will not be in dress-coats!”
As she was leaving the schoolroom, she ran against Henry de Bracieux, who was coming towards her in the corridor.
”Well, I never!” he exclaimed, in surprise. ”What are you doing here?”
”And you?”
”I? Why, I was going back to my room.”
”And I was coming away from Pierrot's.”
”Pierrot is in the garden.”
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