a melodramatic air that did not suit him at all. This is what decided me to run off with you. Here I am. Where are we going to?”
He had passed his arm gently round her and was listening with all his ears, his heart throbbing, and a ravenous hatred awakening within him against these people. But he had got their daughter. They should just see.
He answered: “It is too late to catch a train, so this cab will take us to Sèvres, where we shall pass the night. Tomorrow we shall start for La Roche-Guyon. It is a pretty village on the banks of the Seine, between Nantes and Bonnieres.”
She murmured: “But I have no clothes. I have nothing.”
He smiled carelessly: “Bah! we will arrange all that there.”
The cab rolled along the street. George took one of the young girl’s hands and began to kiss it slowly and with respect. He scarcely knew what to say to her, being scarcely accustomed to platonic lovemaking. But all at once he thought he noted that she was crying. He inquired, with alarm: “What is the matter with you, darling?”
She replied in tearful tones: “Poor mamma, she will not be able to sleep if she has found out my departure.”
Her mother, indeed, was not asleep.
As soon as Susan had left the room, Madame Walter remained face to face with her husband. She asked, bewildered and cast down: “Good heavens! What is the meaning of this?”
Walter exclaimed furiously: “It means that that schemer has bewitched her. It is he who made her refuse Cazolles. He thinks her dowry worth trying for.” He began to walk angrily up and down the room, and went on: “You were always luring him here, too, yourself; you flattered him,