"Fire! Fire!" she shrieked, her cheeks scarlet with excitement.
Losing my self-control, I started back and pressed her hand against my breast, as if to smother the smouldering fire; then, shamefacedly releasing myself and pretending that I had escaped a very real danger, I thanked the Baroness, who was still unable to control her agitation.
We talked till supper-time. The sun had set, and the moon rose behind the cupola of the Observatory, illuminating the apple trees in the orchard. We amused ourselves by trying to differentiate between the apples suspended from the branches and half-hidden by the leaves, which looked sedge-green in the pale moonlight. The ordinary blood-red Calville seemed but a yellow spot; the greyish Astrachan apple had turned green, the Rennet a dark, brownish red, and the others had changed colour in proportion. The same thing had happened with the flowers.
The dahlias presented to our eyes unknown tints, the stocks shone in the colours of another planet, the hues of the Chinese asters were indefinable.
"There, you see, Baroness," I said, commenting on the phenomenon, "how everything in the world is imaginary. Colour does not exist in the abstract; everything depends on the nature of the light. Everything is illusion."
"Everything?" she said softly, remaining standing before me and gazing at me with eyes magnified by the darkness.
"Everything, Baroness!" I lied, confused by this living apparition of flesh and blood, which at the moment terrified me by its unearthly loveliness.
The dishevelled golden hair formed a luminous aureole round her pale, moonlit face; her exquisitely proportionate figure rose by my side, tall and straight and more slender than ever in the striped dress, the colours of which had changed to black and white.
The stocks breathed their voluptuous perfumes, the crickets chirped in the grass, wet with the falling dew, a gentle breeze rustled in the trees, twilight wrapped us round with its soft mantle; everything invited to love; nothing but the cowardice of respectability kept back the avowal which trembled on my lips.
Suddenly an apple dropped from a wind-shaken bough and fell at our feet. The Baroness stooped, picked it up and gave it to me, with a significant gesture.