Thus shaken, the trees and bushes threw off their liquid gems with a lively crepitation, while Hippolyte's laughs resounded at intervals, on the slope of the hill. George also laughed, suddenly forgetful of his nightmare, permitting himself to be won by the seduction of youth, permitting himself to be penetrated by this bracing nocturnal coolness in which was distilled all the fragrance of the earth. He tried to reach first the tree whose foliage seemed most heavily laden with water; and she tried to reach it before him, running courageously on the slippery declivity. They almost always reached the tree at the same time, and they shook it together, both remaining under the shower. In the unsteady shadow of the foliage the whiteness of Hippolyte's eyes and teeth assumed extraordinary lustre; and the tiny drops, like diamond dust, glittered on the pretty curls on her temples, on her cheeks, on her lips, even on her eyelashes, trembling from her laughter.
"Ah, you magician!" cried George, letting go of the tree and seizing the woman, who once more appeared to him in a mysterious flash of nocturnal beauty.
He began to kiss her all over her face; and to his lips she was cool and wet with dew, like fruit just plucked from the tree.
"There! there! there!"
He imprinted hearty, resounding kisses on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her temples, her neck, as insatiable as if the flesh were a novelty to him. And, as she felt the kisses, Hippolyte took that almost ecstatic attitude usual with her when she felt that her lover was in one of his moments of true intoxication. At those times, she seemed anxious to release from the depths of her own substance the sweetest and most powerful perfume of love, to excite George's intoxication to the point of anguish.
"There!"
He stopped, seized by anguish. He had reached the extreme limit of sensation, and could not go beyond.
They said no more; they took each other's hand; they continued on their way to the Hermitage, cutting across the fields because, in their thoughtless frolic, they had wandered from the road. They felt now indefinable lassitude and melancholy. George seemed astonished. So Life, unexpectedly, like a furtive gesture in the shadow, had offered him a new savour—a new sensation, real and profound, at the close of a day full of anxiety, spent in a cloister of flitting phantoms! But was that Life? Was it not rather Dreamland? "The one is always the shadow of the other," he thought. There where is Life, there is Dreamland; there where is Dreamland, there is Life.
"Look!" interrupted Hippolyte, with a start of admiration.
It was as if she illustrated with a picture the thought he had not revealed.