From time to time, Maud was seized with fleeting anxiety. Someone was knocking on the door downstairs or else the dogs were barking. She woke up from her torpor. The feeling of approaching danger had become a kind of unnerving distraction for her in this undisturbed calm. When she succeeded in reading a little or in concentrating briefly on one thing or another, she found herself afterward in a state of profound stupefaction. The reasons for her flight seemed childish to her. She hadn’t been duped, but she liked to imagine that she had been. A hope took hold in her, and she would easily have laughed or cried out if she hadn’t been so alone. Generally she didn’t read for very long, having a hard time following the thread of the story; the effort quickly discouraged her, despite her typically determined will.
For more than two weeks, no one had come to ask about her. When George went to town, the farmers didn’t show any curiosity toward him. A knowing silence surrounded them. He had learned from them, however, that Uderan had been put up for sale and that several buyers were interested. But they were careful not to say anything about Maud.
He left her alone during the day and came back from Semoic only at dinnertime, staggering from tiredness and sometimes a little drunk. The dinner took place without him speaking a word to her, acting indifferent to her presence, and barely looking at her when she spoke to him.
One evening when he returned, George found Maud in the room downstairs. Crouched on the sofa, she was looking for a book on the shelf and was embarrassed to be found there by him; she normally didn’t come down until he called for her at mealtime.
They had been unhappy since her return and avoided each other. Maud found as much instability in George’s life as in her own. In the beginning, she hadn’t tried to discover the secret behind his behavior toward her. In fact, she couldn’t imagine any other way of doing things: if he showed pleasure from having her with him, he would lose her. Thus, he observed total discretion, and even if he suffered, that only proved that the experience wasn’t completely in vain and bore at least some bitter fruit.
But that evening, Maud would have liked to speak freely to George, without holding back. The time had come for them to talk, and to put an end, one way or another, to the uncertainty of their lives. Boredom and solitude did not blind her, even though they made her suffer, and she knew that only time would bring a conclusion to their adventure.
But she was disconcerted by George, because he didn’t seem to expect anything from the days that went by. He didn’t talk about staying or leaving and fell more and more into silence. Even during the night, when he came to her, he stayed the same—harsh and inconsistent; as a result, she, too, came to share in his extravagant behavior, with a pleasure that always astonished her flesh and whose dark memories seemed barely perceptible when daylight came.
When he surprised her in the downstairs room that evening, she saw that he was tired and perhaps happy to find her. He brushed his hand across her face, slowly threw his hat on the couch, and then asked her, “What time is it? Do you know? These evenings never seem to end…” He collapsed on a chair near the table, obviously not expecting a response to his question.
“You came in earlier than usual,” replied Maud. “You see, Amelia hasn’t set the table yet. I came looking for a book on your bookshelf because…” She despaired again as she saw him distance himself from her, as little concerned with her presence as if he lived in a dream in which she had no part. However, he loved her. The proof of this was the desperate determination he put into having her each night, without taking the easy pleasure men usually so willingly allow themselves. But whatever she did, nothing counted in his eyes except that certainty that she did not feel strong enough to give him.
Nevertheless, she felt it was up to her to approach him, because he would never make any effort to understand her. Things weighed on him without his trying to react to them. Thus, at Barque’s, she had already noticed, shouldn’t he have gotten rid of John Pecresse for her? By the same token, during a very long month, he had fled her because Jacques had announced to him the engagement of his sister to John. Shouldn’t he have disregarded that and come to see her? Even if he was like Jacques in some ways, he didn’t have Jacques’s stubbornness, and Maud didn’t know quite what to think of him.
“Because?” he asked her, partially standing. “Because you want to read? Why would you want to? You must have a reason…”
“Because I’m bored,” she countered. “Oh, I’m terribly bored, you know! You leave me alone…”
He reflected, and replied in a soft voice, “If I didn’t leave you, our situation would be even worse. All you can do is be patient.” She didn’t fully understand the meaning of his words but guessed he was trying to speak kindly.
“So, what do you like to read? If you like, I can bring you some books from Semoic.” She grabbed the cover of the old hardback book and read aloud, “The Valley of the Moon. It’s by Jack London.”
“You haven’t read that?” he said. “You should read, Maud; you have nothing else to do here…”
“I don’t have much fun reading. Or else I have sudden urges to do it…,” she confessed.
George shook his head like someone digesting upsetting news. “I saw your brother Jacques at Semoic. He’s incredibly bored. I think that’s why he was so solicitous. He doesn’t care about scandal and has no self-esteem. He’s a despicable person. It makes me sick to let you go; you can’t imagine what it’s like… all the more so because he’s probably angry at you. You should have gone back to Paris a lot sooner; you’re the one holding them back…”
Once again, without seeming to do so, he was asking her the question in theory. She stopped him with a small, dramatic gesture. “I’m sure that if they aren’t leaving, it’s in order to sell Uderan. They wouldn’t put themselves out for me. Don’t give me that…”
He got up. She hadn’t responded, not yet. It was likely she wouldn’t stay. He made a weary motion and added with a calm and resolute voice, “I’m going down to the river, Maud, while I wait for dinner.”
She tried to hold him back and ran after him. “Just a minute, George, just a minute.” He looked at her for a moment, in the muted and sulfurous light of the setting sun: her summer dress, faded and too short, revealed her smooth bare legs in her black city shoes; her long, lifeless hair hung in disorder. Her eyes were truly an indescribable gray, which in the bright light showed off her slightly mauve pallor; that precious skin, more than living, was delicately active, only letting the most discreet nuances of her blood filter through the blues and the mauves… For the first time, he saw in her a deceitful look, in a pleading face with a forced smile.
“If you’d like, George, I could go with you. It’s going to be night soon; no one will see us…” He came back to her, caressed her hand and kissed it. “I haven’t gone out for two weeks,” she pleaded. “You don’t seem to understand. We could walk together until dinner, as we did in the past…”
He shook his head, remaining intransigent, and was a bit surprised that she insisted so much. He suddenly saw in her such beauty that it was, in itself, enough of a promise. This beauty was still unknown to her, moreover, and to most of the people who knew her, but the greatest of beauties needs to know herself in order to assert herself.
He refused to let her accompany him. “In a little while you won’t remember anything, whereas for me… You suspect as much, don’t you? Please forgive me for the nights… When I come home from Semoic, I have to admit, it’s impossible for me not to go up and find you—as long as you’re here, between these four walls…”