Page 405 - madame-bovary

piece, smoking a pipe.
‘What! it is you!’ he said, getting up hurriedly.
‘Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice.’
And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to
open her lips.
‘You have not changed; you are charming as ever!’
‘Oh,’ she replied bitterly, ‘they are poor charms since you
disdained them.’
Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excus-
ing himself in vague terms, in default of being able to invent
better.
She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the
sight of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps
believed; in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was
a secret on which depended the honour, the very life of a
third person.
‘No matter!’ she said, looking at him sadly. ‘I have suf-
fered much.’
He replied philosophically—
‘Such is life!’
‘Has life,’ Emma went on, ‘been good to you at least, since
our separation?’
‘Oh, neither good nor bad.’
‘Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’
‘You think so?’ she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed.
‘Oh, Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!’
It was then that she took his hand, and they remained
some time, their fingers intertwined, like that first day at

0 Madame Bovary