“I swear it!”
“Oh, Tito! what is this?” exclaimed Elena, advancing through the trees, pale, graceful and luminous as a mythological personification of the moon.
Tito, ghastly pale also, his hair dishevelled, his gaze stern, his heart troubled, kissed Elena’s forehead, saying with hoarse accent:—
“Farewell until to-morrow. My life! await me!”
“His life!” repeated Death, with deep compassion.
Elena raised her eyes to heaven, bathed in sad tears, and overcome with a mysterious anguish, she clasped her hands, and repeated in a voice not of this world, “Until to-morrow.”
Tito and Death disappeared, and she was left standing there among the trees, her hands clasped in front of her body. Immovable, magnificent, in the full light of the moon, she looked like some noble statue without a pedestal, forgotten, in the midst of the garden.