“We shall lose ourselves.”
“Let us lose ourselves, for this is Paradise.”
Soon they were making their way along an endless narrow path. They laughed as they hastened along. They came to an interminable avenue of exotic trees, ending in a square with a group of palms in its centre. They turned into a walk without knowing whither it led; she, who had relapsed into her melancholy languor, allowing herself to be dragged.
“You are tired; let us sit on the ground, instead of looking for the stream.”
“Shall we die here?”
“Perhaps some one will pass.”
“No, do not say that any one may pass; you frighten me—how you frighten me! Let us look for the stream.”
At last they found it; shallower, narrower, slower than at its source, as if dying out under the trees. They stood by its edge, bending over it; Lucia leant down to gaze at its grey bed where green weeds waved mysteriously. A green light was reflected on her face. She cast her anemones into the water, watching them disappear and following them with her eyes; then she threw down others, interested and preoccupied in their destruction. When there were no more of her own, she took back those she had given to Andrea; he tried to oppose her.
“No, no; away with it all, all,” said Lucia, harshly.
And she threw them away in bunches, closing her eyes. When her hands were empty, she made a gesture as if to let herself go after them.