"Do you want to lean on me?"
She took George's arm.
They walked several steps in silence.
The night was bright, glorious in all directions. The Great Bear shone on their heads in all its sextuple mystery. Silent and pure as the heaven above, the Adriatic gave as the only indication of its existence its respiration and its perfume.
"Why do you hurry so?" asked Hippolyte.
George slowed down his step. Dominated by a single thought, pursued by the necessity of the act, he had only a confused consciousness for everything else. His inner life seemed to disintegrate, to decompose, to dissolve in a heavy fermentation that invaded even the deepest depths of his being, and brought to the surface shapeless fragments, of diverse nature, as little recognizable as if they had not belonged to the life of the same man.
All these strange, inextricable, abrupt, violent things he vaguely perceived, as if in a half-slumber, while at the same time one single point in his brain retained an extraordinary lucidity, and, in a rigid line, guided him toward the fatal act.
"How melancholy the sound of the flax brake in that field is," said Hippolyte, stopping. "All night long they beat the flax. Does that not make you feel melancholy?"
She abandoned herself on George's arm, brushed his cheek with her tresses.
"Do you recall, at Albano, the pavers who were beating the pavement from morning to night beneath our window?"