Only a few hours had passed, and all that was already so far! Only a few hours had passed, and already the happiness had faded away. Now with a new, but none the less dreadful signification, the question was repeated within me: "It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?" And my exaltation grew; and that uncertain light, and that silent nightfall, and those suspicious rustlings in the already shadowy bushes, and all those deceptive phantasmagorias of the twilight had for my mind a fatal meaning. "If really it were too late? If really she knew herself to be doomed? If she already knew that she carried death in her bosom? Tired of living, tired of suffering, hoping nothing more from me, not daring to kill herself at once with a fire-arm or with poison, she had perhaps cultivated, has perhaps nourished her malady, has kept it secret in order to facilitate its progress, to permit it to take root, to render it incurable. She has wished to arrive slowly and in secret at her final liberation. While observing herself she has become familiar with the science of her malady, and now she knows, she is sure, that she will succumb; she knows, too, that love, that voluptuousness, that my kisses will precipitate the catastrophe. I return to her for good; an unhoped for happiness opens out before her; she loves me, she knows that I love her greatly; in one day the dream has become for us a reality. And it is then that there rises to her lips the word, "Death!" Confusedly I saw pass before me the cruel images that had tormented me during those two hours of waiting, on the morning of the surgical operation, when I seemed to have before my eyes, as clearly as the figures on an anatomical atlas, all the frightful ravages produced by maladies in the organisms of women. And there recurred to me another recollection still more distant, with an accompaniment of precise images: the darkened room, the open window, the waving curtains, the flickering candle-flame before the dim mirror, the sinister appearance of things, and she, Juliana, upright, leaning against a closet, convulsed, writhing as if she had swallowed poison.... And the accusing voice, the same voice, also repeated to me: "It is for you, for you that she wanted to die. It is you, you, who have urged her on to death."
Seized by a blind fright, by a sort of panic, as if all these images had been veritable realities, I ran back to the house.
On raising my eyes, the house seemed without signs of life, the window openings and the balconies were filled with shadows.
"Juliana!" I cried, with supreme anguish, springing to the stairway, as if I feared I should not arrive soon enough to see her again.
What ailed me? What was this dementia?
I panted as I climbed the stairs in the semi-darkness. I rushed into the room.
"What is the matter?" asked Juliana, rising.
"Nothing, nothing. I thought you had called me. I have run a little. How are you feeling now?"
"I am so cold, Tullio, so cold! Feel my hands."
She stretched her hands out to me. They were icy.