This designation made them laugh.
"Suppose we smoke a cigarette?" said George. "It is three o'clock. It was at this time that I entered the church, two years ago."
And, once more, the memory of the great day occupied his mind. During several minutes they smoked without speaking, listening to the rain, which had increased in force. Through the drenched window-panes they saw the frail little tree, twisting and bending under the squall.
"My love is of older date than yours," said George. "It was born before that day."
She protested.
He, fascinated by the profound charm of the days irrevocably passed, continued tenderly: "I can see you again as you passed the first time. What an ineffaceable impression! It was towards evening, when the lights begin to be lit, when waves of azure fall on the streets.
"I was alone before the windows of Alinari. I was looking at the figures, but distinguished them with difficulty. It was an indefinable sensation—some lassitude, much sadness, with I know not what vague desire for ideality. That evening I had an ardent thirst for poetry, elevation, refined and spiritual things. Was it a presentiment?"
He made a long pause; but Hippolyte said nothing, waiting for him to continue, engrossed in the exquisite pleasure of listening to him among the light smoke of the cigarettes, which seemed to envelop the veiled memories in still another veil.
"It was in February. I was paying a visit to Orvieto at that very time. I even believe that if I was then at Alinari's, it was to ask him for a photograph of the reliquary. And you passed! Since then, on two or three other occasions—two or three, not more—I have seen you as pale, that singular pallor. You cannot imagine, Hippolyte, how pale you were. Never have I seen its equal. I thought: 'How can that woman keep up? She cannot have a single drop of blood in her veins.' It was a supernatural pallor, which in the flood of azure falling from the sky to the pavement gave you the appearance of a creature without a body. I paid no attention to the man who accompanied you; I did not wish to follow you; I did not receive even as much as a look from you. I recall another detail. You stopped a few steps farther on, because a lamp-lighter blocked the pavement. Ah! I still see in the air the scintillation of the small flame at the summit of the staff; I see the sudden lighting of the gas which bathed you in light."
Hippolyte smiled, but somewhat sadly, with that sadness which oppresses the heart of women when they regard their portraits taken in former days.