Page 213 - madame-bovary

set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trem-
bling. She stammered:
‘Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!’
‘If it must be,’ he went on, his face changing; and he again
became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm.
They went back. He said—
‘What was the matter with you? Why? I do not under-
stand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as
a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immacu-
late. But I need you to live! I must have your eyes, your voice,
your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!’
And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried
to disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked
along.
But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
‘Oh! one moment!’ said Rodolphe. ‘Do not let us go!
Stay!’
He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds
made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay mo-
tionless between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the
grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.
‘I am wrong! I am wrong!’ she said. ‘I am mad to listen
to you!’
‘Why? Emma! Emma!’
‘Oh, Rodolphe!’ said the young woman slowly, leaning
on his shoulder.
The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat.
She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and fal-
tering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she

1 Madame Bovary