A few minutes later, when my mother had gone out and we were alone, she repeated, in a deeper tone: "Thank you!"
She raised a hand towards me so that I might take it in mine. As her sleeve was large, the gesture exposed the arm almost as far as the elbow. And that white and faithful hand, which offered me love, indulgence, peace, dreamland, oblivion, all that is beautiful and all that is good, trembled in the air a second, stretched towards me as if making the supreme offering.
I believe that at the hour of death, at the precise instant when my sufferings come to an end, it will be that gesture, only that one, that I shall see; amid all the numberless images of my past life, I shall see only that one gesture.
When I look back I do not succeed in reconstructing with exactitude the state of soul in which I found myself. What I can affirm is, that again at that moment I understood the extreme gravity of the situation, and the prime importance of the acts that were being accomplished, or that were about to be accomplished. I had, or I believed I had, perfect lucidity. Two phenomena of my conscience were developing without becoming confounded, perfectly distinct, parallel. In one of them predominated, joined to pity for the poor creature whom I was on the point of striking, a bitter sentiment of regret for the offering that I was about to reject. In the other predominated, joined to the deep, eager desire for the absent mistress, an egotistical sentiment that busied itself in coldly examining the circumstances most suitable for favoring my impunity. This parallelism gave to my inner life an incredible intensity and acceleration.
The decisive hour had come. Having to start the following morning, I could not temporize any longer. So that the affair should not seem too ambiguous and altogether too sudden, I must prepare my mother for my departure that very morning at breakfast, and allege some plausible pretext. I must also tell Juliana, before telling my mother, so as to prevent any possible contretemps. "And suppose Juliana should rebel? Suppose, in a moment of grief and indignation, she reveals the truth to my mother? How can I obtain from her a promise of silence, a new act of abnegation?" Up to the last moment I argued with myself. "Will she understand immediately, at the first word? And if she should not understand? If she should innocently ask me the object of my journey? What could I answer? But she will understand. It is impossible that she has not already learned from one of her friends, from Signora Talice, for instance, that Teresa Raffo has left Rome."
My strength began to give way. I could not have borne much longer the crisis that became more acute each moment. With a contraction of all my nerves, I came to a decision; and since she was speaking, I determined that she herself should furnish me the opportunity for delivering the blow.
She spoke of a thousand things, and especially of the future, with unaccustomed volubility. That strange, convulsed appearance that I had already noticed in her seemed more apparent. I was still standing behind her chair; up to then I had avoided her eyes by adroit manoeuvring in the room, remaining attentive behind her chair, busy either in arranging the window curtains or straightening the books in the little bookcase, or in picking up from the carpet the petals of a bouquet of roses that had shed its leaves. Standing up, I looked at the parting in her hair, her long and curved eyelashes, the light palpitation of her bosom, and her hands, her beautiful hands extended on the arms of the arm-chair, lying flat, just as on that day, white as on that day, "when they could be distinguished from the linen only by the azure of their veins."
Oh, that day! Not more than a week had gone by since then. Why did it seem to me to be so far away?
Standing behind her, in that state of extreme tension, and, so to speak, on the watch, I imagined that perhaps she instinctively felt the danger hovering over her head: I believed I divined in her a sort of vague uneasiness. Once more I felt sick at heart.
She finally said: