Page 214 - madame-bovary

gave herself up to him—
The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun
passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and
there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled
luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had
scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; some-
thing sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt
her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood
coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far
away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague
prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her
throbbing nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was
mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles.
They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud
they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the
same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around
them seemed changed; and yet for her something had hap-
pened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and
took her hand to kiss it.
She was charming on horseback—upright, with her slen-
der waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face
somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening.
On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the
road. People looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she
pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride,
and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of

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