"Just what I meant to do," she says. "We'll have a rest—I'm worn out."
Is she putting it on, to make me forget my fatigue, or is she really tired out? Her rosy colour has certainly paled very suddenly. Her pure face is troubled, like limpid water which has been agitated.
Mounting some steps, we gain a shady retreat, bordering on and overlooking the road. A parasol, three chairs, a seat, an iron railing.
Jeannine has dropped into a chair. I have seated myself beside her. Our eyes roam over the stretch of country in front of us.
The short January afternoon is already drawing to a close. The sun is sinking behind the islands, which look like deep-sea monsters, with purple scales. The West is bathed in a luminous pallor, even the tracery of the Estérel is hardly discernible out yonder.
At the bottom of the orange bay, there lie white houses with red roofs and blazing windows, flaming as if the darkness were not near at hand. And that is the way of my destiny. The last moment of radiance, on the threshold of the eternal night!
Jeannine is still silent. André chatters, and I am glad of it, and keep him up to it. I profess an interest in the hairy cactus creeping along the wall. I ask him the names of certain plants, and pretend to get muddled in order to make him laugh.
Is it I who am talking and joking, I, who smile? There is another desperate I, coiled up at the centre of my being.
A tinkle. The door-bell. André peeps between the branches.