Midnight struck.
"Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to morrow. One day more!"
He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air
"You have the passports?"
"Yes."
"You are forgetting nothing?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Certainly."
"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at midday?"
He nodded.
"Till to morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she watched him go.
He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes
"To morrow!" she cried.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall.
"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! She was a pretty mistress!"
And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her.
"For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile myself have a child on my hands."
He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand times no! That would be too stupid."
