Scarcely had she risen than she fell against my breast; and then it was she who kissed me first, with a sort of convulsive furor, as if a prey to a sudden frenzy, as if she wished at one stroke to appease an atrociously painful thirst.
"Ah! It is killing me!" she repeated, when our lips had parted.
And that humid mouth, somewhat projecting, half-open, that had become redder, animated by languor, in that face so pale and frail, really gave me the indefinable impression that, of all that body similar to a corpse, the lips only were alive.
She murmured, dreamily, raising her closed eyes, the long lashes of which trembled as if a slight smile had filtered out from beneath the lids:
"Are you happy?"
I pressed her to my heart.
"Very well, let us go. Carry me where you will. Support me a little, Tullio; I feel as if my knees would give way."
"To the house, Juliana?"
"Where you wish."
I supported her by placing my arm around her waist, and I drew her along. She walked like a somnambulist. At first we were silent; and, each moment, we both turned together toward one another, to look at each other. She seemed to me to be really a new woman; my attention was arrested by the details, was preoccupied by them; a slight mark scarcely visible on the skin, a little dimple on the lower lip, the curvature of the lashes, a vein at the temple, the shadow that encircled the eyes, the infinitely delicate lobe of the ear. The brown mark on the neck was hardly hidden by the edging of lace; at each movement of the head that Juliana made, one saw it appear or disappear; and that little particularity irritated my impatience. I was intoxicated, and yet, I was very lucid. I heard the cries of the swallows, more numerous, the splashing of the jets of water in the fountain close by. I had the sensation that life was fleeting, that time was flying. And that sun, and those flowers, and those perfumes, and those sounds, and all the joyousness of the springtime, aroused in me for the third time an inexplicable emotion of anxiety.