Page 264 - madame-bovary

she watched him go.
He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning
over the water’s edge between the bulrushes
‘To-morrow!’ she cried.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking
fast across the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw
her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade
like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart
that he leant against a tree lest he should fall.
‘What an imbecile I am!’ he said with a fearful oath. ‘No
matter! She was a pretty mistress!’
And immediately Emma’s beauty, with all the pleasures
of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened;
then he rebelled against her.
‘For, after all,’ he exclaimed, gesticulating, ‘I can’t exile
myself—have a child on my hands.’
He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
‘And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no!
a thousand times no! That would be too stupid.’