He stopped short. He felt that she did not understand, she could not understand. And he beheld her ever more detached from him, as life from death; but for this very reason he loved her still, yea, more than ever, as one loves life that is dying.
She slowly raised her head from his shoulder and looked him in the face with eyes grown hostile again.
"Now you listen to me," she said, "and tell me no more lies. Are we or are we not going away together as we settled last night? We cannot go on living here, in this way. That is certain!... That is certain!" she repeated with rising anger, after a moment of painful silence. "If we are to live together we must go away at once, this very night. I have money, you know, it is my own. And your mother and my brothers and every one else will excuse us afterwards when they see that we only wanted to live according to the truth. We cannot go on living like this, no, we cannot!"
"Ah--then why have you come back?... Leave me! Get away, leave me!"
He did not leave her. He felt her whole body shaking and he was afraid of her; and as she bowed herself over their united hands he expected to feel her teeth fasten in his flesh.
"Go, go!" she insisted, "I did not send for you! Since we must be brave, why did you come back? Why have you kissed me again? Ah, if you think you can play with me like this you are mistaken! If you think you can come here at night and write me humiliating letters in the day you are mistaken again! You came back to-night and you will come back to-morrow night and every night after that, until at last you drive me mad. But I won't have it, I won't have it!"
"We must be pure and brave, you say," she continued, and her face, grown old and tragic, became now pale as death; "but you never said that before to-night. You fill me with horror! Go away, far away, and go at once, so that to-morrow I can wake up without the terror of expecting you and being humiliated like this again."
"O God, O God!" he groaned, bending over her, but she repulsed him sharply.
"Do you think you are speaking to a child?" she burst out now: "I am old, and it is you who have made me grow old in a few hours. The straight path of life! Oh, yes, it would be going straight if we continued this secret intrigue, wouldn't it? I should find myself a husband and you should marry me to him, and then we could go on seeing each other, you and I, and deceiving every one for the rest of our lives. Oh, you don't know me if that is your idea! Last night you said, 'Let us go away, we will get married and I will work.' Didn't you say that? Didn't you? But to-night you come and talk to me instead about God and sacrifice. So now there is an end of it all: we will part. But you, I say it again, you must leave the village this very night, I never wish to see you again. If to-morrow morning you go once more into our church to say Mass I shall go there too, and from the altar steps I shall say to the people: 'This is your saint, who works miracles by day and by night goes to unprotected girls to seduce them!'"