Part 54 (1/2)
”Grandmamma has told me that you are going away. I am sure that it is because of me?”
He nodded a.s.sent, and she put her little hand through his arm, and moved in the direction of another room, which was almost empty.
”Please,” she began, in a beseeching tone, ”please, do not go away.”
”And I, in my turn,” he answered, deeply moved, ”must say, please, Bijou, do not ask what is impossible. I have not been able to be with you without getting as foolish as all the others. I have let myself go on dreaming, just as fools dream, and now that all is over, I must try to become wise again, and to forget my dream, and in order to do that I must go away, very far away, too.”
”You thought that--that I should say yes?” she asked.
”Well, you were so good to me, so sweet and confiding always, that I did hope--yes, G.o.d help me--I did hope--that perhaps you would let me go on loving you.”
”And so it was my fault that you hoped that?” she said dreamily.
”It wasn't your fault--it was mine; one always does hope what one wants.”
”Yes, I am sure that I ought not to have behaved as I did with you.”
And her eyes filled with tears as she murmured, almost humbly: ”I am so sorry! will you forgive me?”
”Bijou!” exclaimed M. de Clagny, almost beside himself. ”My dear Bijou, it is I who ought to ask your forgiveness for causing you a moment's sadness.”
”Well, then, be kind--don't go away! not to-morrow, at any rate!
Promise me that you will come to Bracieux to-morrow to see us act our play! Oh, don't say no! And then, afterwards, I will talk to you--better than I could this evening.” And gazing up at him with her soft, luminous eyes, she added: ”You won't regret coming, I am sure.”
Jean de Blaye was just pa.s.sing by at that moment, and Bijou stopped him, and said, in a coaxing way:
”Won't you ask me for a waltz? do, please, you waltz so well.”
And laying her hand on his shoulder, she disappeared, just as Pierrot arrived to claim his dance.
”Leave your cousin in peace,” said M. de Jonzac, who was seated on a divan watching the dancing. ”You are much too young to ask girls to dance with you--I mean girls like Bijou.”
”Ah, how old must I be then before I can ask them--not as old as you, I suppose?”
”You certainly have a nice way of saying things.”
”I say, father, why do Jean and Henry say that young La Balue gets to be worse and worse form?”
”Young La Balue? Oh, I don't know.”
”They say that he makes himself up.”
”That's true.”
”And that he gets to be worse and worse form! How?”
”If you want to know how, you have only to ask your cousins: they will tell you.”
”They won't, though! I asked them, and Jean just said, 'Don't come bothering here.' Are we going home soon?”