Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/111

Rh odours. Workmen, peasants, torn from their villages, soldiers in barracks, ardently longing after their villages far away, sharp-pointed steeples which rend your heart with homesickness:—this association of fugitive ideas in Kehlmark's mind turned into one dominant idea of the peasant, from whence stood out all at once, as though symbolic, the image of Blandine, not at all the Blandine of the present day, but the little peasant girl, such as she seemed retrospectively to him, the poet enamoured of strength and simple nature.

"She is upstairs at her toilette," he said to himself, "for it is nearly time for her to join grandmamma."

Somnambulistic, his eyes blinded with rustic licence and desperate embracings, he ascended the stairs to the young girl's room.

Although she was in her chemise Blandine only experienced a slight shiver, scarcely perceptible, at this intrusion. It was as though she had expected him. In the act of combing out her luxuriant head of hair, which was flowing over her shoulders, and wafting forth the scent of lavender and other fragrant herbs of the country, she