"Besides," she reflected, "an office clerk, a banker, or a merchant,
would not be at leisure to spend a whole season in paying his
addresses to me in the midst of woods and fields; wasting his time as
freely as a nobleman who has life before him free of all care."
She had given herself up to meditations far more interesting to her
than these preliminary thoughts, when a slight rustling in the leaves
announced to her than Maximilien had been watching her for a minute,
not probably without admiration.
"Do you know that it is very wrong to take a young girl thus
unawares?" she asked him, smiling.
"Especially when they are busy with their secrets," replied Maximilien
archly.
"Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have yours."
"Then you really were thinking of your secrets?" he went on, laughing.
"No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know."
"But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine," cried the young
man, softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's hand and drawing it
through his arm.
After walking a few steps they found themselves under a clump of trees
which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped in a haze of red and brown.
This touch of natural magic lent a certain solemnity to the moment.
The young man's free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing
of his surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm,
stirred her to an emotion that was all the more disturbing because it
was produced by the simplest and most innocent circumstances.
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