The first breath of the evening breeze stirred the fronds of the palms above her, fluted gently her robe of delicately-coloured striped foulard. The western sunlight enveloped her in its flame as she stood like the incarnation of the tropics, the spirit of the western islands, a strophe from the poem of the palm tree, and the azure.
Gaspard took her hands in his and drew her towards him, she shuddered slightly. He would have kissed her but they were not alone, a woman had just turned the bend of the road, and from below, the bells of a mule told of some market gardener coming up by the steep path from the Rue Vauclin.
“Ah, yes—did you not think I would come?”
“O, if I had not thought so I would have flung myself into the sea.” (Provençal!)
“You would have cared, then?”
“Sweet—my only care is now for you.”
Straight as a flame beneath her load, she listened to him, and as she listened, her gaze seemed to pass beyond him to some happy vision in infinity. She seemed like a child listening for the first time to the voice of Spring. The man holding her hands was quite taken away from the world, it was as though she had led him to some extraordinary height beyond the clouds and was holding him there by the hands lest he should fall.
“Ah, yes, for you, that is all I care—just for you—”
He held her hands to his heart.