"Look at me. Is not my hair dishevelled?"
"No."
"But what a face! Just look."
One would have thought that she had stepped from a coffin, she seemed so exhausted. Great violet rings encircled her eyes.
"And yet I still live," she added, attempting to smile.
"Are you suffering?"
"No, Tullio. But I do not know what ails me. It seems to me that I am entirely empty, that my head is empty, my veins empty, my heart empty. You might say I had given you all. You see—I am now a shadow, a shadow of life."
While pronouncing these words, she smiled in a strange manner; she smiled a subtle and sibylline smile, that troubled me, that raised up in me confused inquietudes. I was too enervated, I was too languid, too much blinded by my intoxication; the activity of my mind had become indolent, my consciousness became dulled. No sinister suspicion had penetrated me yet. Meanwhile I looked at her attentively, I examined her with anxiety, without knowing why.
She turned to the mirror again, and put on her hat; then she approached the table, and took her bracelet and gloves.
"I am ready," she said. She seemed to be still seeking something, and added: