“What wrong?—Oh! nothing, mother, nothing wrong, I swear to you—”
He replied this without irritation at being questioned, and bearing the look of his mother with eyes of frankness. It was true, and she believed him.
But, as she stayed in front of him, her hand on the door-latch, he said, with dumb violence:
“You are not going to prevent me from going to her, since I shall leave in three days!”
Then, in presence of this young will in revolt, the mother, enclosing in herself the tumult of her contradictory thoughts, lowered her head and, without a word, stood aside to let him pass.
CHAPTER XXV.
It was their last evening, for, the day before yesterday, at the Mayor's office of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he had, with a hand trembling a little, signed his engagement for three years in the Second naval infantry, whose garrison was a military port of the North.
It was their last evening,—and they had said that they would make it longer than usual,—it would last till midnight, Gracieuse had decided: midnight, which in the villages is an unseasonable and black hour, an hour after which, she did not know why, all seemed to the little betrothed graver and guiltier.
In spite of the ardent desire of their senses, the idea had not come to one nor to the other that, during this last meeting, under the oppression of parting, something more might be attempted.