"Dear one, it is true I have offended you, perhaps you are angry with me."
Julien had not been expecting this simple tone. He was on the point of betraying himself.
"You want guarantees, my dear, she added after a silence which she had hoped would be broken. Take me away, let us leave for London. I shall be ruined, dishonoured for ever." She had the courage to take her hand away from Julien to cover her eyes with it.
All her feelings of reserve and feminine virtue had come back into her soul. "Well, dishonour me," she said at last with a sigh, "that will be a guarantee."
"I was happy yesterday, because I had the courage to be severe with myself," thought Julien. After a short silence he had sufficient control over his heart to say in an icy tone,
"Once we are on the road to London, once you are dishonoured, to employ your own expression, who will answer that you will still love me? that my very presence in the post-chaise will not seem importunate? I am not a monster; to have ruined your reputation will only make me still more unhappy. It is not your position in society which is the obstacle, it is unfortunately your own character. Can you yourself guarantee that you will love me for eight days?"
"Ah! let her love me for eight days, just eight days," whispered Julien to himself, "and I will die of happiness. What do I care for the future, what do I care for life? And yet if I wish that divine happiness can commence this very minute, it only depends on me."
Mathild saw that he was pensive.
"So I am completely unworthy of you," she said to him, taking his hand.
Julien kissed her, but at the same time the iron hand of duty gripped his heart. If she sees how much I adore her I shall lose her. And before leaving her arms, he had reassumed all that dignity which is proper to a man.
He managed on this and the following days to conceal his inordinate happiness. There were moments when he even refused himself the pleasure of clasping her in his arms. At other times the delirium of happiness prevailed over all the counsels of prudence.
He had been accustomed to station himself near a bower of
