"Did you dream," I said, with the saline savor in my mouth that impregnated me to the heart (later, during the hours that followed, I was astonished at not having found an intolerable bitterness in these tears), "did you dream you would be loved so much? Did you dream of such happiness? It is I, look, it is I who speak to you like this; look well: it is I. If you knew how strange that seems to me! If I could tell you! I know that I do not know you from to-day, I know I do not love you from to-day, I know that you are what you have always been. And yet it seems to me that I only just found you a moment ago, when you said: 'Yes, still more.' You said it, did you not? Only three words—a breath. And I am reborn, and you are reborn, and we will be happy, happy forever."
I told her these things in a voice that seemed to come from a distance, broken, indefinable; in one of those tones whose intonations seem to rise to our lips, not from our material organs, but from the deepest depths of our soul. And she, who up to then had shed silent tears, burst into sobs.
Violent, too violent were her sobs; not as when one succumbs to a limitless joy, but when one gives vent to inconsolable despair. She sobbed so violently that, for several seconds, I was seized by the stupor caused by excessive manifestations, supreme paroxysms of human emotions. Unconsciously I drew back a little; but, immediately, I noticed the distance that now separated us; I at once noticed not only that there was no longer a physical contact, but also that the sensation of moral communion had become dissipated in the twinkling of an eye. We were still two beings, distinct, separate, external to one another. The very difference of our attitudes even accentuated this disunion. Sitting back at her end of the bench and covering her face with her two hands, she sobbed; and every one of her sobs shook her entire being, put in evidence her fragility, so to speak. Without touching her, I was again on my knees before her; and I looked at her, stupefied, and yet strangely lucid, attentive to all that was passing within me, and yet with every sense open to the perception of surrounding objects. I heard both her sobs and the twittering of the swallows; I had an exact notion of time and place. And those flowers, and those perfumes, and the surrounding glory of the joyous springtime inspired me with a fright that grew and grew, becoming a sort of panicky terror, an instinctive and blind terror against which reason was powerless. And, like a thunderbolt that lights up a bank of clouds, one thought flashed out from the midst of this tumultuous fear, illuminated me, struck me to the heart: "She is impure!"
Ah! why did I not fall then, struck dead by the blow? Why did not one of my vital organs collapse? Why did I not expire at the feet of the woman who, in a few short moments, had raised me to the height of happiness, only to precipitate me into an abyss of misery?
"Answer!"
I seized her wrists, I uncovered her face, I spoke close to her; and my voice was so low that I scarcely heard it myself in the tumult of my brain.
"Answer! What do these tears signify?"
She ceased to sob, and looked at me; and her eyes, reddened by the tears, became dilated with an expression of supreme anguish, as if they had seen me dying. In fact, my face must have seemed lifeless.
"It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?" I added, revealing my terrible thought by this obscure question.
"No, no, Tullio! No—it is—nothing. What could you have thought? No, no. I am so weak, you see. I am no longer what I was formerly. I have no strength. I am ill, you know; I am so ill! I have not had the force to resist your words. You understand. This crisis has come to me so unexpectedly. It is my nervousness—a sort of convulsion. When one has a spasm like this, one cannot distinguish whether it is from joy or sorrow. Oh! my God! See, it is passing. Rise, Tullio; come here, by my side."