How was it that Juliana had not guessed what was passing in me? How was it she had not understood me? How was it that her heart had not received the counter-shock of my impetuous joy?
We looked at each other. I can still see the anxious expression of her face, over which hovered an indefinable smile. She spoke in that muffled, feeble voice, always hesitating with the singular hesitation that I had already remarked in other circumstances and that made her appear to be ceaselessly preoccupied in restraining the words that mounted to her lips in order to substitute for them other words. She said:
"Let us take a walk round the garden before opening the house. How long it is since I have seen it in such flower. The last time we were here was three years ago, do you remember? It was also in April, during Easter week."
Without doubt she wished to overcome her agitation, but she could not succeed; without doubt she wished to repress the effusion of her tenderness, but she could not. In this place, the first words issued from her own mouth had begun to evoke memories. After a few steps she stopped, and we looked at each other. An indefinable change, as if she were forcing herself to stifle something, passed through her dark eyes.
"Juliana!" I cried, incapable of controlling myself, feeling an afflux of passionate and tender words spring from the bottom of my heart, seized by a mad frenzy to kneel before her on the sand, to embrace her knees, to kiss her dress, her hands, her wrists, furiously, ceaselessly.
With a supplicating gesture, she made a motion for me to be quiet. And she continued to advance along the path, hastening her steps.
She wore a light-gray dress trimmed with darker shades, a gray felt hat, and carried a gray-silk parasol embroidered with white trefoils. I still see her walking between the tufted masses of lilacs that bent toward her their thousands of bluish-violet bunches.
It was hardly eleven o'clock. The morning was warm, a precocious warmth; in the azure floated a number of flocculent vapors. The charming bushes that had given their name to this country-house blossomed on every side, were masters of the garden, formed a wood, interspersed here and there by tea-rose bushes and by the tufts of the corn-flag. Here and there the roses climbed up stalks, insinuated themselves between the branches, fell back again in chains, in garlands, festoons, bouquets; at the foot of the stalks, Florentine orris sprang from between their leaves, like long, greenish swords, flowers of large and noble design. The three perfumes harmonized in a deep accord that I recognized, because, since the now distant epoch, these had remained in my memory as clearly as the accord of three musical notes. In the silence only the warbling of the swallows could be heard. The house could scarcely be seen between the cones of the cypresses, and the swallows were as numerous there as bees around a hive.
Very soon Juliana slowed down her pace. I walked at her side, so near that at times our elbows touched. She glanced attentively around her, as if she feared something might escape her. Two or three times I detected on her lips a movement as if she were about to speak: it was like the first outline of a word that remained unpronounced.
I said to her, in a low voice and timidly: