“It is going to rain,” said Emma.
“I have a cloak,” he answered.
“Ah!”
She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward.
The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one’s being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself.
“Well, goodbye,” he sighed.
She raised her head with a quick movement.
“Yes, goodbye—go!”
They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.
“In the English fashion, then,” she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.
Léon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.
When he reached the marketplace, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Léon set off running.