The lamps gave no light, for the
flakes had built a shutter across the glass like a policeman's dark
lantern. The flying multitudes in the air turned him dizzy; he could not
tell upon which side of the road he drove, and he could not tell what he
would do when the wall beyond the outskirts of Chantilly forsook him. As
to what was happening below him, what ruts, ditches, pits or hillocks he
was navigating, he had no idea; his ship was afloat upon the snow,
sluggishly rolling and heaving as it met with soft, mysterious
obstacles.
Heaviness and gloom sat upon the velvet seat behind him. The white, wild
night outside was playful and waggish compared with the black dejection
behind the opaque glass windows.
Fanny, who could not see her hand move in the darkness, saw clearly with
other miserable and roving eyes the road that lay before her.
"Julien, good-bye. Don't forget me!" That she would say to him in a few
days; that was the gate, the black portal which would lead her into the
road. That she would say, with entreaty, yet no painful tones of hers
would represent enough the entreaty of her heart that _neither would
forget the other_. She thought of this.
Not in wilful unreason, or in disbelief of his promise, she looked at
this parting as though it might be final. Without him she could see no
charm ahead.
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