The young wife and Duroy sat still seized on by a strange uneasiness, stirred by anxious expectation. The invalid had murmured something. The priest repeated, “You have given way to guilty pleasures—of what kind, my son?”
Madeleine rose and said, “Let us go down into the garden for a short time. We must not listen to his secrets.”
And they went and sat down on a bench before the door beneath a rose tree in bloom, and beside a bed of pinks, which shed their soft and powerful perfume abroad in the pure air. Duroy, after a few moments’ silence, inquired, “Shall you be long before you return to Paris?”
“Oh, no,” she replied. “As soon as it is all over I shall go back there.”
“Within ten days?”
“Yes, at the most.”
“He has no relations, then?”
“None except cousins. His father and mother died when he was quite young.”
They both watched a butterfly sipping existence from the pinks, passing from one to another with a soft flutter of his wings, which continued to flap slowly when he alighted on a flower. They remained silent for a considerable time.
The servant came to inform them that “the priest had finished,” and they went upstairs together.
Forestier seemed to have grown still thinner since the day before. The priest held out his hand to him, saying, “Good day, my son, I shall call in again tomorrow morning,” and took his departure.