I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.

He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the brackets,
the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But
she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a
windmill roof downward at the end of a string. Leon kissed her several
times on the neck.

"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!"

And he gave her back to her mother.

"Take her away," she said.

They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed
against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly
against his thigh.

"It is going to rain," said Emma.

"I have a cloak," he answered.

"Ah!"

She turned round, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light
fell on it as on a piece of marble to the curve of the eyebrows, without
one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing in the horizon or what
she was thinking within herself.

"Well, good-bye," he sighed.

She raised her head with a quick movement.

"Yes, good-bye--go!"

They advanced toward each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.

"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to
him, and forcing a laugh.

Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being
seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their
eyes met again, and he disappeared.

When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to
look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds.
He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the
curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it,
slowly opened its long oblique folds, that spread out with a single
movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon
set off running.

From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a
coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were
talking. They were waiting for him.

"Embrace me," said the chemist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your
coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after
yourself."

"Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary.

Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs,
uttered these three sad words:

"A pleasant journey!"

"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his