"I will watch over you; I will quench my thirst with your breath; I will read in your face the dreams you are dreaming. You will perhaps speak my name, dreaming."
"Yes, yes."
"At that time, on certain nights, you spoke in your dream. How charming you were! Ah! what a voice! You cannot know.... A voice that you could never have heard, that I alone know—I alone... And I will hear it again. Who knows what you will say? You will speak my name perhaps. How I love the movement of your mouth when it pronounces the u of my name! One could call it the outline of a kiss.... You know? I will prompt words into your ear that they may enter into your dream. Do you remember that at that time, on certain mornings, I divined your dreams? Ah! you will see, dear soul; I will be more caressing than at that time, You will see how tender I will be in order to cure you. You need so much affection, poor soul!"
"Yes, yes," she repeated every moment, yieldingly, favoring thereby my last illusion, and also augmenting that sort of drowsy intoxication that arose from my own voice and the belief that my words were cradled there like a voluptuous song.
"Did you hear anything?" I asked suddenly; and I raised myself a little in order to hear better.
"What? Is it Federico?"
"No; listen."
We both listened, our eyes turned toward the garden. The garden was but a confused and violet-colored mass, touched here and there by the darkening light of the dying day. A zone of light persisted on the limit of the sky, a long, tricolored zone: below of a blood-red, then orange, then green, then a fading vegetable green. In the silence of the twilight a strong and limpid voice resounded, like the prelude of a flute.
The nightingale was singing.
"It is on the cypress," murmured Juliana.