“And I asked whether he was versatile!” he muttered. “Trust an Italian for economising labour. It looks like unwarrantable invasion of friendly territory—but it's a dodge worth remembering, all the same.”
He drew the Duchessa's letter from his pocket, and read it again, and again approached it to his face, communing with that ghost of a perfume.
“Heavens! how it makes one think of chiffons,” he exclaimed. “Thursday—Thursday—help me to live till Thursday!”
XVII
But he had n't to live till Thursday—he was destined to see her not later than the next afternoon.
You know with what abruptness, with how brief a warning, storms will spring from the blue, in that land of lakes and mountains.
It was three o'clock or thereabouts; and Peter was reading in his garden; and the whole world lay basking in unmitigated sunshine.
Then, all at once, somehow, you felt a change in things: the sunshine seemed less brilliant, the shadows less solid, less sharply outlined. Oh, it was very slight, very uncertain; you had to look twice to assure yourself that it was n't a mere fancy. It seemed as if never so thin a gauze had been drawn over the face of the sun, just faintly bedimming, without obscuring it. You could have ransacked the sky in vain to discover the smallest shred of cloud.
At the same time, the air, which had been hot all day—hot, but buoyant, but stimulant, but quick with oxygen—seemed to become thick, sluggish, suffocating, seemed to yield up its vital principle, and to fall a dead weight upon the earth. And this effect was accompanied by a sudden silence—the usual busy out-of-door country noises were suddenly suspended: the locusts stopped their singing; not a bird twittered; not a leaf rustled: the world held its breath. And if the river went on babbling, babbling, that was a very part of the silence—accented, underscored it.