“Where the shadow is deepest, where there is a sound of rushing water, where no one will think of coming,” she murmured, in a melting mood. Leaning on his arm, in a narrow lane where the hedges were high, she gathered sheaves of wild anemones and stuck bunches of them in her waistband, in the lace round her throat, and the ribbons of her parasol.
Those hedges, blooming in the shade, pierced here and there by faint rays of sun, were full of wild anemones. She slipped some into the pockets of his coat and others in his button-hole. Andrea laughed silently, delightedly; happy in the sensation of the touch of those light fingers on the cloth. They said nothing to each other, but because of the narrow path she kept very close to him. A little bird lightly grazed her brow. Lucia uttered a cry, started away from him, and ran on.
“Come, come, Andrea; how enchanting!”
They had reached a platform, a sort of green terrace that looked down over another valley. High up, from the side of the rock, rushed a dancing, foaming torrent, falling straight down like a white, flaky cataract, and forming far below a wide, limpid, but shallow stream, that ran like a nameless river to an unknown sea, between two rows of poplars. From the terrace they could look down on the little northern landscape, the placid stream, and pale verdure: while the fine spray refreshed their faces, and they revelled in the grateful moisture and the soft breeze from the falling water.
“Oh! how beautiful, how beautiful,” said Lucia, absorbed.
“This is better than your drawing-rooms, where one cannot breathe,” he said, with a long breath.
“It is beautiful ...” murmured Lucia. She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and he thrilled at the slight contact. Her hair was turned up high under the black lace, leaving the white nape bare; her arm was bare under the silken gauze, and on the slightest pressure he could feel the rustle of the crisp diaphanous stuff.
“Let us try to get down to the stream, to see where it goes,” said Lucia.
“There is no road down here.”
“Let us find a way, an unknown way.”