Hortense wept. "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
Her tenderness had, however, in no way diminished. Leonor had to admit it as he received contritely Hortense's poignant kisses. He asked her pardon, humiliated himself, and for a moment she was happy in the caresses of her lover, but she was still whispering to herself, "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
After her departure, Leonor coldly informed his landlady that he did not mean to come back; then after a long tedious wait in an inn parlour, he returned to Barnavast. A letter awaited him, pressing him to come. M. Des Boys begged him, with a kind of anxiety, to fix the day on which they could come and fetch him.
Leonor would have liked, however, to devote some few days to meditation. He had a question to answer, "Does she love me?"
"We shall not meet again at Carentan, that is decided. Besides, it was absurd. What a place to make love in! Her failure was due to her repugnance for the surroundings. It was a sign of her refinement of feeling. And then women have no imagination. To me, everything is a palace; the woman I adore would light up a hovel.... Does she love me?"
But it was in vain that he repeated the question, he could find no answer.
"What a fool I am! I shall see well enough next time. I continue to love her. She is beautiful, she is obedient.... But is that the aim of my life? Suppose she were given me for my own?"
But to this question he could think of no answer either.
Hortense, at the same moment, in the old room she had had before she was married, was going to sleep, sighing, "Oh, my dream, my beautiful dream!"
When Leonor arrived at Robinvast, Rose and her father were sitting in the garden, each of them reading a letter.... From time to time, Rose would raise her eyes and look at the trees; M. Des Boys between two sentences of his letter would examine his daughter. During this last fortnight, she had been pale, sad, out of humour; and her father, absent-minded, but affectionate, had grown anxious. What was going on between the recently engaged couple? But M. Des Boys would never have dared to question his daughter. He was waiting for a confidence, knowing quite well that it would never come; and on her side, Rose was unhappy at having to keep locked up in her heart the troubles that were suffocating her. These two people, shy and secretive towards one another, might have remained like this for years without deciding to speak the words which would have consoled them.