That probability calmed me. It seemed to me I should feel less repulsion for a new daughter, and that, perhaps, I might even succeed in tolerating her. With time she would leave my house, take another name, enter another family.
Meantime, the nearer the term approached, the more my irritation increased. I was weary of constantly debating with myself in the same fruitless agitation, amidst the same fears and perplexities. I should have liked events to be precipitated, a catastrophe of some sort to occur. No matter what catastrophe was preferable to this agony.
One day my brother asked Juliana:
"How long will it be yet?"
She answered:
"Another month."
We were in September. Summer was drawing to a close. We were approaching the autumnal equinox, the most charming period of the year, the season that bears in itself a sort of aerial intoxication emanating from the ripe grapes. The enchantment gradually penetrated me, soothed my soul, at times inspired in me a desire for furious tendernesses or delicate expansions. Maria and Natalia passed long hours with me, alone with me, either in my apartment or out in the surrounding country. I had never loved them before with a love so deep, so anxious. From their eyes, softly impregnated with scarcely conscious thoughts, there at times descended on my soul a ray of peace.
XXVIII.
One day I was seeking Juliana throughout the Badiola. It was in the early afternoon. As I found her neither in her room nor anywhere else, I entered my mother's room. The doors were open; neither sound nor voice was heard; the light curtains waved at the windows; through the open bay-windows were glimpses of the verdure of the elms. Between the brightly colored walls all breathed of peace and repose.
I advanced cautiously toward the sanctuary. I walked softly, in order not to disturb my mother, in case she were dozing. I parted the curtains, and, without crossing the threshold, I leaned forward and looked in. I heard, in fact, the breathing of a person sleeping; I saw my mother, who was sleeping in an arm-chair in a corner of the window; I saw Juliana's hair above the back of another arm-chair. I entered.