The garden in front of the house glowed and steamed, all filled with the fire of the sunset and the deluge of rain.
She was sitting at a table in the drawing-room, and, with persistent dreaminess, gazing through the half-open door into the garden.
I knew what was passing at that moment in her soul; I knew that, after a brief but agonising struggle, she was at that instant giving herself up to a feeling she could no longer master.
All at once she got up, went quickly out into the garden, and disappeared.
An hour passed ... a second; she had not returned.
Then I got up, and, getting out of the house, I turned along the walk by which—of that I had no doubt—she had gone.
All was darkness about me; the night had already fallen. But on the damp sand of the path a roundish object could be discerned—bright red even through the mist.
I stooped down. It was a fresh, new-blown rose. Two hours before I had seen this very rose on her bosom.
I carefully picked up the flower that had fallen in the mud, and, going back to the drawing-room, laid it on the table before her chair.
And now at last she came back, and with light footsteps, crossing the whole room, sat down at the table.