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185 STRAIT IS THE GATE

paleness. She was smiling, but her failing limbs seemed hardly to bear her up. I was anxious to know whether she was alone at Fongueusemare. No, Robert was living with her; Juliette, Edouard and their three children had been spending August with them. ... We had reached the bench; we sat down and the conversation for a few minutes longer dragged along in the usual commonplace enquiries. She asked after my work. I replied with a bad grace. I should have liked her to feel that my work no longer interested me. I should have liked to disappoint her as she had disappointed me. I do not know whether I succeeded, but if so, she did not show it. As for me, full both of resentment and love, I did my best to speak as curtly as possible, and was angry with myself for the emotion which at times made my voice tremble. The setting sun, which had been hidden for a few moments by a cloud, reappeared on the edge of the horizon almost opposite us, flooding the empty fields with a shimmering glory and heaping the narrow valley that opened at our feet with a sudden profusion of wealth; then it disappeared. I sat there dazzled and speechless; I felt that I was wrapped round and steeped in a kind of golden ecstasy, in which my resentment vanished and nothing survived in me but love. Alissa,

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