nue. The night seems darker
because no sound disturbs its stillness; only the dead leaves, swept
along by our skirts, drag along, utter a cry like rending silk.

Rose sighed:

"One would think the air was listening!"

I could not help exclaiming:

"That's rather fine, what you said then!"

And silence closes in again around our two little lives, both doubtless
stirred by one and the same thought.

We go a little farther and sit down in the fields, where an unfinished
haystack offers us a couch. We can hardly distinguish the line of the
horizon between the dark earth and the dark sky. A bat flits across our
faces; and Rose says, quietly:

"It's flying low. That means fine weather to-morrow. I must get in
the...."

And suddenly her voice breaks and she covers her face with her hands.
All is silent....

I feel myself brutally good. The certainty of the coming confession
encourages me in my coldness and I remain mute, while my heart is
beating with pity and excitement....

But she speaks at last and each note of that tear-filled voice, by turns
faltering, violent and plaintive, brings before my eyes, staring into
the darkness, every step of her soul's calvary. I listen in
astonishment. And yet do we not know that every woman's existence has
its secret? I see the long procession of those who have told me their
story. The weakest of them had found strength to love; to yield to man's
desire, the bravest had been cowardly, the truest had betrayed, the most
loyal and upright had lied. Everywhen and everywhere the flame of life
had found its way through rocks, thrust aside obstacles, subjugated
wills. Even the woman whom nature had most jealously defended, the plain
woman whom I saw imprisoned in a stunted shape and condemned to live
behind an ugly mask, even she, when she told me her love-story,
compelled me to believe that she had been the most beloved, perhaps, and
her passion the most heroic.

Rose, following the common law, had no strength to fulfil her own will,
but all strength to obey another's. Soon after arriving at
Sainte-Colombe, five years ago, she came to know a young man who had
since left the district. One day, when they were alone in the farmhouse
kitchen, he flung his arms around her and, without a word, overcame her
feeble resistance....

I could not help interrupting her story:

"Did you love him, Rose?"

"No," she said, "I did not!"

"Then, why did you yield?... Why?"

"I don't know," s