This will explain to you my stupid behavior.

I am suffering the penalty to-day, for while I was hesitating, another took my place; although he is dead, his shadow stands between us, and I know that you love him still." She listened to him with bent head and half-closed eyes, and her heart began to beat violently.
"I never have loved him in the way you suppose," she replied, simply.
A gleam of light shot through Julien's melancholy blue eyes.

Both remained silent.

The green pasture-lands, bathed in the full noonday sun, were lying before them.

The grasshoppers were chirping in the bushes, and the skylarks were soaring aloft with their joyous songs.
Julien was endeavoring to extract the exact meaning from the reply he had just heard.