"Ah! It is good to be silent!" he said, stretching his limbs.
"Yes," returned Christophe, "we understand each other so well!"
They relapsed into silence. In the darkness they could not see each other. They were both smiling.
And yet, though they felt the same, when they were together--or imagined that they did--in reality they knew nothing of each other. Sabine did not bother about it. Christophe was more curious. One evening he asked her:
"No," she said simply. "It bores me, I don't understand it."
Her frankness charmed him. He was sick of the lies of people who said that they were mad about music, and were bored to death when they heard it: and it seemed to him almost a virtue not to like it and to say so. He asked if Sabine read.
"Not serious books if she did not want them. Poetry."
"Yes. She was interested in them: but they were always too long: she never had the patience to finish them. She forgot the beginning: skipped chapters and then lost the thread. And then she threw the book away."
"Bah! Enough for a story that is not true. She kept her interest for better things than books."
"No. It was too hot. There were too many people. So much better at home. The lights tired her eyes. And the actors were so ugly!"
He agreed with her in that. But there were other things in the theater: the play, for instance.
"Yes," she said absently. "But I have no time."
"Oh!" she said calmly. "That does not take much time."
"Your little girl takes up your time then?"
"Oh! no, poor child! She is very good and plays by herself."
He begged pardon for his indiscretion. But she was amused by it.
"She could not say. All sorts of things. Getting up, dressing, thinking of dinner, cooking dinner, eating dinner, thinking of supper, cleaning her room.... And then the day was over.... And besides you must have a little time for doing nothing!"
"Especially when I am doing nothing. It is much worse doing something: that bores me."
"You are very happy!" said Christophe. "I can't do nothing."
When he left off talking to her he was at his ease and comfortable. It was enough for him to see her. He was rid of his anxieties, and irritations, and the nervous trouble that made him sick at heart. When he was talking to her he was beyond care: and so when he thought of her. He dared not admit it to himself: but as soon as he was in her presence, he was filled with a delicious soft emotion that brought him almost to unconsciousness. At night he slept as he had never done.