Then, looking steadily at him with that singular expression which she was in the habit of assuming when she wished to appease and soften him, she added:
"Come here; come and sit by my side."
He was standing in the shadow, on the threshold of one of the doors that opened on the loggia. She was seated outside, on the parapet, clothed in a light, white robe, in a languorous pose, her bust outlined against the background of the sea, where still lingered the glints of twilight, and the profile of her brown head was outlined in a zone of limpid amber. He seemed as if reborn, as if he had stepped out from a close and suffocating place, from an atmosphere heavy with poisonous exhalations. In George's eyes she seemed as if she were evaporating like a vial of perfumes, were losing the ideal life accumulated in her by the power of Music, were gradually emptying herself of importunate dreams, were returning to primitive animalism.
George thought: "As always, she has done nothing but receive and obediently retain the attitudes I have given her. The inner life has always been and will always be factitious in her. Directly my suggestion is interrupted, she returns to her own nature, she becomes a woman again, an instrument of low lasciviousness. Nothing will ever change her substance, nothing will purify her. She has plebeian blood, and, in her blood, God knows what ignoble heredities! But I, too, shall never be able to free myself from the desire with which she fires me; I can never extirpate it from my flesh. Henceforth, I can neither live with her nor without her. I know I must die; but shall I leave her for a successor?" His hate against the unconscious creature had never been aroused with so much violence. He dissected her pitilessly, with acrimony that astonished even himself. It was as if he were avenging some infidelity, some disloyalty, that had surpassed all the limits of perfidy. He felt the envious rancor of the shipwrecked sailor who, at the moment of sinking, sees near him his comrade about to save himself, to cling to life again. For him that anniversary brought a new confirmation of the decree which he already knew was irrevocable. For him that day was the Epiphany of Death. He felt that he was no longer master of himself; he felt the absolute domination of the fixed idea that, from instant to instant, might suggest the supreme act to him, and, at the same time, communicate the effective impulsion to his will. And while criminal images confusedly passed through his brain, "Must I die alone?" he repeated to himself. "Must I die alone?"
He shuddered when Hippolyte touched his face and passed her arm around his neck.
"Did I frighten you?" she asked.
On seeing him disappear in the still deepening shadow of the door, a singular restlessness had seized her, and she had risen to embrace him.
"Of what are you thinking? What's the matter? Why are you like that to-day?"
She spoke in an insinuating tone, and, still with her arms about him, she caressed his head. In the obscurity he saw the mysterious pallor of that face, the light of those eyes. An irresistible trembling seized him.
"You are trembling! What ails you? What's the matter?"