The storm still hung on the horizon. Heavy masses of clouds, shot through by pale lightning, towered, on the other side of the river, above the gloomy architecture of the Trastevere. They had not yet reached the moon, which, palely shining, stood high in the heavens. Its light illumined the court, with its statues and bas-reliefs. The air was sultry.
Natalie drew a deep breath. Suddenly she discovered Lensky. He was staring down on the Tiber, which, rolling by in its bed, incessantly sighed, as if from sorrow at its sad lot, which compelled it continually to hasten past everything.
Could one really take it amiss in the stream if it sometimes overflowed its banks in order to carry away with it some of the beautiful objects, near which, condemned to perpetual wandering, it might not remain standing?
"Ah! you here?" said Natalie. "I thought you had taken French leave. I was vexed with you."
"So!"
"Yes, because--because I was sorry not to be able to thank you. It was really----"
"Do not speak so," said he, quite roughly; "just as if you did not know that there is nothing in the world, nothing in my power that I would not do for you!"
She bent her head back a little and smiled at him in a friendly way, but as if his words had not surprised her in the slightest. "You are very good to me," said she.
He felt strangely thus alone with her in this sweet-perfumed, melancholy, intoxicating sultriness, alone with this happiness that was so near him, and which he was afraid of frightening away by an unseemly imprudence. He felt by turns hot and cold. Why did she not go?
She rested her hands on the marble balustrade of the loggia and bending over it she murmured: "How beautiful! oh, how wonderfully beautiful! And it is so tiresome in there; do you not find it so, Boris Nikolaivitch?"