"I will lie on the sofa."
"Why should you upset yourself? You are very tired: that can be seen in your face. And, besides, if I knew you were there I could not sleep. Be good, Tullio! To-morrow morning, early, you may come and see me. We both need rest, now, complete rest."
Her voice was low and caressing, without any unusual intonation. Excepting her persistence in persuading me to retire, she exhibited no other indication of the fatal preoccupation. She seemed crushed, but calm. From time to time she closed her eyes, as if slumber weighted down her eyelids. What should I do? Leave her? But it was precisely her calm that frightened me. Such a calm could only come to her from the fixity of her resolution. What to do? Everything considered, my very presence during the night would have been useless if she had prepared for suicide and provided herself with the means. She could, without any difficulty, have put her project into execution. Was that means really morphine? And where had she hidden that little vial? Beneath her pillow? In the drawer of the night table? How could I look for it? I should have to speak, to say unexpectedly: "I know that you want to kill yourself." But what a scene would follow! I could not have kept silent about the rest. And what a night that would have been!
So many perplexities exhausted my energy, dissolved it.
My nerves were unstrung. The physical fatigue rapidly increased. My entire organism arrived at that condition of extreme weakness in which the functions of the will are on the point of being suspended, in which the actions and reactions cease to correspond, or cease to accomplish their end. I felt myself incapable of resisting any longer, of combating, of accomplishing no matter what necessary act. The sensation of my weakness, the sensation of the fatality of what had happened and what was about to happen, still paralyzed me; my being seemed to be struck by a sudden torpor. I felt a blind desire to hide myself again from the last and obscure consciousness of my being. In short, my anguish led to this desperate thought: "Come what will, I, too, have the resource of death."
"Yes, Juliana," I said, "I will leave you in peace. Sleep. We will see one another to-morrow."
"You can scarcely keep your eyes open."
"No, it is true, I am very tired. Good-by; goodnight."
"Will you not give me a kiss, Tullio?"
A shudder of instinctive repugnance passed through my body. I hesitated.