"But my notion is squelched. I couldn't help it. Your astonished expression squelched it. Before I spoke, when the idea was still imprisoned behind the wall of my forehead, it gave me a light like a torch, I assure you. You questioned me, and now it's a mocking will-o'-the-wisp, teasing me from a distance and vanishing as I advance. Didn't I tell you it was an idea not to be handled?
"I have fallen short of caressing a bit of truth between my clasped hands. It escaped me.... And you smile consoled."
XXIII
Twice we said we would part at the turn of the road, at that tree, exactly at that tree, and twice we passed by laughing at our weakness. We still could not believe in the separation at hand.
But the moment was upon us.
There, at the house hidden behind the trees and bushes, you will go on, and I will stand still.
He pressed my hand with increasing tenderness. My laugh taunted us with so much assurance that I tried to believe in it. To fill up the gaps, we blustered and said the needless inconsequent things people always say when they face a long separation.
It was a little before noon. The sheeted shadows cast by the sunlight burned and smoked in bluish waves. Between the trees of the woods stretching beside the sea liquid flakes blinded your eyes. You'd see annoying red spots long after you'd turned your eyes away.
I said to myself: "Only a few steps more and it will be over. One step less and another minute will be plucked from our parting." To keep down my emotion I hurriedly spoke of something else.
It must have rained in the morning. When we brushed against the branches, the silence was broken at our feet by the limpid sound of falling drops, the leaves wore a new skin, and the atmosphere, impregnated with freshness, smiled the smile of nature when she wants to dry her tears. The depths of the woods were enveloped in a blue down; a troop of squat little fir-trees, their skirts on a level with the ground, rang a crisp chime.