THE ROMANCES OF THE ROSE

THE INTRUDER

BY

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO

TRANSLATED BY
ARTHUR HORNBLOW

Beati immaculati...

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. RICHMOND
1898

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND

By the Same Author.

THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH.

THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS.

THE INTRUDER.[*]

[*] In the original Italian, this novel is entitled "L'Innocente."

Should I go before the judge and say: "I have committed a crime. He would not be dead if I had not killed him. It is I, Tullio Hermil, who am his assassin. I premeditated that assassination in my house. I committed it with perfect lucidity of conscience, methodically, in all security. And I have gone on living in my house with my secret for a whole year, until to-day. To-day is the anniversary I deliver myself into your hands. Listen to me, judge me."

Can I go before the judge? Can I speak to him like that?

I cannot, and I will not. The justice of men does not reach as far as me. There is no tribunal on earth competent to judge me.

And yet I feel a desire to accuse myself, to confess. I feel a desire to reveal my secret to someone.

TO WHOM?

My first recollection is as follows:

It was in April. For several days, during the festivities of the Pentecost, Juliana and I and our two little daughters, Maria and Natalia, had been in the country, at my mother's house, a roomy old place known as the Badiola. It was the seventh year of our marriage.

Three years had already slipped by since another Pentecost which, passed in that villa, white and isolated as a monastery, and embalmed with tufts of violets, had seemed to me a veritable festival of pardon, peace, and love. At that time Natalia, the second of my little girls, barely emerged from swaddling clothes like a flower from its envelope, was learning to walk; and Juliana was very good and indulgent with me, although there was a shade of melancholy in her smile. I had come back to her, repentant and submissive, after the first serious infidelity. My mother, who knew nothing of what had happened, had tied with her dear hands a sprig of olive at the head of our bed, and filled the little silver holy-water dish hanging on the wall.

But what had not happened in three years! Between Juliana and myself the breach was henceforth definitive and irreparable. I had gone on wronging her repeatedly; I had insulted her in the most outrageous manner without regard for her feelings, without restraint, carried away by an appetite greedy for pleasure, by the vertigo of my passions, by the curiosity of my corrupted mind. I had had as mistresses two of her intimate friends; I had spent several weeks at Florence with Teresa Raffo, shamelessly; I had fought with the false Count Raffo a duel in which my unfortunate adversary covered himself with ridicule owing to certain bizarre circumstances. And nothing of all this had remained unknown to Juliana; and she had suffered, but with much pride, and almost without saying anything.

We had only had on this subject a few very short interviews, at which I did not tell a single falsehood. It seemed to me that my sincerity would attenuate my fault in the eyes of this sweet and noble woman, who I knew had a superior mind.

I knew also that she recognized my intellectual superiority and that she excused in part the disorders of my conduct by the specious theories that, more than once, I had aired in her presence, to the great detriment of the moral doctrines that the majority of men profess to believe in. The conviction that she would not judge me like any ordinary man lightened my conscience of the weight of my errors. "She, too, understands," I thought, "that, since I am different from others, since I have a different conception of life, I have the right to elude the duties that others would impose on me. I have the right to despise the opinions of others, and to lead with absolute sincerity the only life possible to my higher nature."

I had the conviction of being not only a higher nature, but also a rare intelligence; and I believed that the rarity of my sensations and my feelings ennobled, distinguished, all my acts. Proud and curious of this rarity of mine, I was incapable of conceiving the slightest sacrifice, the slightest abnegation of myself; I was incapable of renouncing the expression, the manifestation of one of my desires. But, at the bottom of all my subtilties, there was only a terrible egotism that caused me to neglect my duties, while at the same time I accepted the benefits of my situation.

Insensibly, in fact, from one abuse to another, I had succeeded in reconquering my old-time liberty, even with Juliana's consent, without hypocrisy, without subterfuge, without degrading lies. I made a study of being loyal, no matter at what cost, as others make a study of deception.

At all times, I strove to confirm, between Juliana and myself, the new pact of fraternal affection and pure friendship. She was to be my sister, the best of my friends.

My sister, my only sister, Constance, had died when she was nine years old, leaving in my heart infinite regret. I often thought, with profound melancholy, of that little soul who had not been able to offer me the treasure of her tenderness, a treasure that I dreamed inexhaustible. Among all human affections, among all earthly loves, that of a sister had always seemed to me the highest and the most consoling. I often thought of that lost great consolation, and the irrevocableness of death added a sort of mystery to my pain. Where can one, on earth, find another sister?

Spontaneously, this sentimental aspiration turned towards Juliana.

Too proud to accept a division, she had already renounced all caresses, all abandon. And I, for some time past, no longer felt a shade of sensual disturbance when near her. In vain I felt her breath on my cheek, respired her perfume, looked at the little brown mole on her neck. I remained absolutely cold. It seemed impossible to me that this was the same woman.

I then offered to become a brother to her; and she accepted, without affectation. If she were sad, I myself was still more so in thinking that our love was buried forever and without hope of resurrection, in thinking that our lips doubtless would never, never meet again.

And, in the blindness of my egotism, it seemed to me that at heart she ought to be grateful to me for this sadness, which I felt was already incurable; it seemed to me that she ought to be pleased at it and find a consolation in it, as if with a reflection of our past love.

There had been a time when we both dreamed, not only of love, but of passion until death—usque ad mortem. We had both believed in our dream—and more than once, during our moments of ecstasy, we had uttered the great illusionary words: Always! never! We had ended by believing in the affinity of our flesh, in that affinity so rare, so mysterious, which binds two human creatures together by the frightful bond of insatiable desire. We believed so because the acuteness of our sensations had not diminished even after, by the creation of a new being, the obscure Genius of the Species had attained, by means of our persons, his unique object.

Then the illusion had faded away; the flame had gone out. My soul—I swear it—had sincerely wept over the catastrophe. But how to prevent a necessary phenomenon? How to avoid the inevitable?

It was, therefore, very fortunate that, after the death of our love, caused by the fatal necessity of the phenomenon, and consequently by the fault of neither of us, we were able to go on living in the same house, bound by a new sentiment, which was perhaps not less profound than the old one, and which, assuredly, was higher and more singular. It was very fortunate that a new illusion could replace the old one, and establish between our souls an exchange of pure affections, delicate emotions, and exquisite sadness.

But, in reality, what was to be the end of this species of platonic rhetoric? To induce the victim to smilingly consent to her own immolation.

In reality, our new existence, henceforth fraternal and no longer conjugal, was based entirely on this hypothesis: that the sister should make complete abnegation of herself. I myself resumed my liberty, I could go in quest of those new sensations which my nerves needed, I could feel passion for another woman, devote to my mistress all the time that I liked, live away from home a strange and ardent existence, and then return, find there again the sister who was awaiting me, see everywhere in my rooms visible traces of her care: on my table, a vase full of roses that her hands had arranged; on all sides order, refinement, and the radiant cleanliness of a place in which lives a Grace. Was not that an enviable condition for me? And was not she an extraordinarily precious wife, who would consent to sacrifice her youth to me and who considered herself well recompensed if only I pressed a grateful and almost religious kiss on her proud and gentle brow?

At times my gratitude became so warm that it took the form of an infinity of attentions and affectionate greetings. I possessed the art of being the best of brothers. When I was absent, I wrote Juliana long letters full of melancholy and tenderness, which were often posted at the same time as those addressed to my mistress. And my mistress could not have been jealous of them any more than she could be jealous of my adoration of Constance's memory.

All absorbed as I was by the intensity of my peculiar life, I could not elude the problems which, at times, presented themselves to my mind. That Juliana could continue her sacrifice with such marvellous strength, she must love me with a sovereign love; but if she loved me and could be only my sister, she must, without any possible doubt, bear in her soul the secret of a mortal despair. Was not, therefore, any man a madman who, without remorse, immolated to other loves, disturbed and chimerical, this creature who smiled so sadly, and was so gentle and brave? I remember (and I am surprised now at my perversity at that time), I remember that, among the reasons that I advanced to calm myself, the strongest was this one: "Since moral greatness results from the violence of the sorrows over which one triumphs, it is necessary that she should suffer all I make her suffer so that she may have an opportunity to display her heroism."

But, one day, I noticed that she was also suffering in her health. I perceived that her pale face was growing still whiter, and at times took on livid tints. More than once I noticed on her face the contractions of suppressed pain; more than once, in my presence, she was seized with an irresistible trembling which shook her entire being and made her teeth rattle as by the shiver of a sudden fever. One evening while she was upstairs I heard her give a piercing cry. I ran to her and found her standing upright, leaning against a cupboard, convulsed, writhing, as if she had taken poison. She seized my hand, and held it tight as in a vise.

"Tullio! Tullio! How horrible it is! Oh, how horrible it is!"

She looked at me, close to; she kept fixed upon me her dilated eyes, which in the twilight seemed of unusual size. And in those large orbs I saw pass something like the waves of some mysterious agony. That persistent, intolerable gaze suddenly filled me with a mad terror. It was evening, twilight, and the window was open, and the swollen curtains shook at the breath of the wind, and a candle was burning on a table, before a mirror. And, I know not why, the shaking of the curtains, the hopeless flickering of the tiny flame which reflected her paleness in the glass, assumed in my mind a sinister significance, and increased my terror. The idea of poison flashed across my mind. At that moment she could not repress another cry, and, beside herself by the excess of pain, she threw herself upon my breast distractedly.

"Oh! Tullio, Tullio! Help me, help me!"

Paralyzed with terror, I remained for a moment without power to utter a word, without power to make a movement.

"What have you done, Juliana? What have you done? Speak, speak! What have you done?"

Surprised at the great change in my voice, she drew back a little and looked at me. My face must have been whiter and more upset than hers; for she replied quickly, in a rambling way:

"Nothing, nothing, Tullio! Don't be frightened. See, it's nothing—only one of my usual spells. You know—it will soon be over—don't be alarmed."

But, seized by the terrible suspicion, I doubted her words. It seemed to me that all around revealed to me the tragic event and that an inner voice repeated: "It's for you, for you, that she wanted to die; it's you, you, who have urged her on towards death." And I took her hands, and I felt they were cold, and I saw a bead of sweat running down her brow.

"No, no," I cried; "you're deceiving me. For pity's sake, Juliana, my cherished soul, speak, speak! Tell me, have you— Oh! for pity's sake, tell me, have you taken——"

And my horrified eyes sought all around, on the furniture, on the carpet, everywhere, for some sign.

Then she understood. Again she let herself fall on my breast, and shuddering, making me shudder, she said to me her mouth against my shoulder (never, never, shall I forget that indefinable tone), she said to me:

"No, no, no, Tullio; no!"

Ah! what else in the world can equal the vertiginous acceleration of our inner life? We remained in this attitude in the middle of the room, silent; and, in a single moment, the inconceivable immensity of a universe of feelings and thoughts surged up in me with frightful distinctness. "And if it were true?" demanded the voice; "if it were true?"

Continual starts shook Juliana against my breast—she still kept her face hidden; and I myself knew well that, in spite of the sufferings of her poor flesh, she thought only of the possibility of the deed I had suggested—she thought only of my mad terror.

A question rose to my lips: "Have you ever been tempted?" Then another: "Is there a possibility of your giving way to the temptation?" I did not give expression to either of them, and yet it seemed to me that she understood. From then on, we were both under the empire of this thought of death, this picture of death; we both were subjected to a kind of tragic exaltation which made us forget the moment of doubt in which it was born, and lose consciousness of the real. All at once she burst into sobs, and her tears provoked my tears. We mingled our tears, such hot tears, alas! which yet were powerless to change our destiny.

I knew later that, for several months already, she had been tormented with complicated internal troubles, those terrible occult maladies which, in the woman, disturb all the vital functions. The doctor whom I consulted gave me to understand that another pregnancy might be fatal to her.

This grieved me, and, nevertheless, relieved me from two sources of anxiety. I was convinced that I had nothing to do with Juliana's decline, and I had an excuse in my mother's eyes for our separate beds and all the other changes that had taken place in our domestic life. About that time my mother was coming to Rome from the country, where, since my father's death, she passed the greater part of the year with my brother Federico.

My mother was very fond of her young daughter-in-law. In her eyes Juliana was truly the ideal wife, the companion of whom she had dreamed for her son. She did not believe that anywhere in the world there was a more beautiful, more gentle, more noble woman than Juliana. She could not conceive that I could desire other women, abandon myself in other arms, sleep upon other hearts. As she had been loved for twenty years by a man, always with the same devotion, with the same fidelity, until death, she was ignorant of the lassitude, the disgust, the treachery, and all the miseries and all the shames that the conjugal alcove shelters. She was ignorant of the wounds that I had inflicted and that I was still inflicting on this dear soul which did not deserve them. Deceived by Juliana's generous dissimulation, she still believed in our felicity. How it would have grieved her had she known the truth!

At that period I was still under the domination of Teresa Raffo, whose violent and empoisoned charms evoked in me the image of Menippo's mistress. Do you remember what Appollonius says to Menippo in the ravishing poem: "O beautiful young man, thou art caressing a serpent; a serpent is caressing thee!"

Chance favored me. The death of an aunt compelled Teresa to leave Rome and to remain absent some time. I was then able by unusual assiduity when with my wife to fill the great void that the departure of the "Biondissima" left in my days. The disturbance which had taken place in me that evening had not yet been quieted. Since that evening there floated between Juliana and myself something new, indefinable.

As her physical suffering increased, my mother and I were able, not without great difficulty, to secure her consent to the surgical operation necessitated by her condition. After the operation she was confined to her bed for thirty or forty days and compelled to take the greatest precautions during her convalescence. Already the poor invalid's nerves were extremely weak and irritable. The preparations, long and wearisome, exhausted and exasperated her so much that, more than once, she tried to throw herself out of bed, to revolt, to escape the brutal punishment which violated her, humiliated her, degraded her.

"Tell me," she said to me one day with bitterness, "aren't you disgusted with me when you think of it? Oh, how horrible it is!"

And she made a gesture of repugnance at herself, frowned, then was silent.

Another day as I entered her room she cried:

"Go away, go away, Tullio! Please go away! You can come back when I'm better. If you stay here you'll hate me. I'm odious now, odious—don't look at me."

Sobs choked her. The same day, a few hours later, while I was standing by her bedside in silence, because I thought she was about to doze off, she let fall these obscure words, pronounced with the strange tone of someone speaking in his sleep:

"Yes, really, I did it. It was a good idea——"

"What are you saying, Juliana?"

She did not reply.

"What are you thinking of, Juliana?"

She replied only by a contraction of her mouth, which was meant to be a smile.

I believed I understood. And a tumultuous wave of regret, tenderness, and pity assailed me. I would have given everything so that at that moment she could have read in my soul, that she could have observed there in its plenitude my inexpressible and consequently vain emotion. "Forgive me! Forgive me! Tell me what I must do to obtain my forgiveness, to make you forget all the pain I have caused you.... I will come back to you, I will be entirely yours, forever. It is you, you alone whom I have truly loved; you are the only love of my life. My soul ceaselessly turns towards you, and seeks you, and regrets you. I swear it! When away from you I have never felt sincere joy, I have never had an instant of complete forgetfulness. Never, never! I swear it! You alone, of all the women in the world, are the living expression of goodness and gentleness. You are the best and the sweetest creature that I have ever dreamed of. You are the Unique! And yet I have offended you, I have caused you to suffer, I have made you think of death as a desirable thing! Oh! you will pardon me; but I—I can never forgive myself. You, you will forget; but I, I shall not forget. I shall always be in my own eyes an unworthy being, and the devotion of all my life will not seem a sufficient reparation. Henceforth, as formerly, you will be my mistress, my friend, my sister; as formerly, you will be my guardian and my adviser. I will tell you everything, I will reveal everything to you. You will be my soul. And you will get better. It is I who will cure you. You will see how tender your doctor will be to you. Oh, you already know his tenderness. Remember, remember! Then, too, you were ill, and you wouldn't have any other doctor than me. And I did not leave your bedside night or day. And you used to say: 'Juliana will always remember, always!' And you had tears in your eyes and I drank them, trembling. Saint! Saint! Remember. When you can get up, when you are convalescent, we'll go back there, we'll return to the Lilacs. You will still be a little weak, but you'll feel so well! And I, I shall feel once more my old-time gayety and I will make you smile, I will make you laugh. You yourself will have once more your sweet bursts of joy that rejuvenated my heart, you will have once more your exquisite girl-like airs, and you'll wear once more on your shoulders that plait of hair which pleased me so much. We are young. We can, if you wish it, reconquer happiness. We'll live—yes—we'll live...." That is how I spoke inwardly; but the words did not issue from my lips. It was in vain that I was moved and that my eyes became moist; I knew that my emotion was temporary, that these promises were deceptive. I knew also that Juliana would not entertain any illusions and that she would reply by that feeble and distrustful smile which, at other times, I had already noticed on her lips. That smile meant: "Yes, I know, you are good and you would like to spare me pain; but you are not master of yourself, you cannot resist the fatalities that control you. Why should I blind my eyes to the truth?"

That day I said nothing; and the days that followed, in spite of the frequent return of the same confused impulse of repentance, vague intentions, and dreams, I did not dare to speak. "To come back to her, you must abandon those things you delight in, that woman who corrupts you. Have you the strength to do it?" I replied to myself: "Who knows?" And I waited from day to day for the strength that did not come; I waited from day to day for some event, without knowing what, that could determine my resolution, render it inevitable. My mind pictured our new life, the slow reblossoming of our legitimate love, the strange savor of certain sensations renewed. "We'll go back there, to the Lilacs, to the house where still linger our sweetest memories; we'll be there alone, all alone, because Maria and Natalia would stay with my mother at the Badiola." The weather would be mild and the invalid would not leave the support of my arms, in those familiar paths where each of our footsteps would awaken a souvenir. At certain moments her pale face would suddenly be covered with a faint flush, and we should both feel a little timidity in each other's presence; at others, we should seem preoccupied; at others, we should avoid each other's gaze. Why? Finally, one day, the suggestion of the spot would master us, and I should be bold enough to speak to her of the early days. "Do you remember? Do you remember?" And, little by little, we should both feel the disturbance grow and become unbearable; we should both at the same time clasp each other in a wild embrace, we should kiss each other on the mouth, we should feel about to faint. She would faint, yes; and I would lift her in my arms, I would call her by the names that a supreme tenderness would suggest to me. Her eyes would reopen, all the veils would be lifted from her gaze, and, for an instant, her very soul would be riveted on me: she would appear to me transfigured. Then the old ardor would retake possession of us, we should reënter into the great illusion. We should both have but a unique and incessant thought; we should be tormented by inexpressible uneasiness. I should ask her, my voice trembling: "Are you better?" And, by its tone, she would understand the question that this question concealed; and she would reply, without succeeding in dissimulating a thrill: "Not yet." And in the evening, when we left each other and each retired to a separate chamber, we should feel as if dying of anguish. But, one morning, with an unexpected glance, her eyes would say to me: "To-day, to-day..." And, in the terror of this divine and terrible moment, she would take some childish pretext to flee from me. She would say to me: "Let us go out, let us go out." We would go out, on a grayish, cloudy, oppressive afternoon. The walk would tire us. Drops of rain, warm as tears, would begin to fall on our hands and faces. I would say to her in a changed voice: "Let us go home." And, on the threshold, unexpectedly I would seize her in my arms, I would feel her abandon herself almost fainting in my arms, I would carry her upstairs without perceiving her weight. It is so long ago—so long ago! And our beings, under the shock of a divine and terrible sensation, never experienced before, never before imagined, would be utterly exhausted. And, afterwards, she would appear to me almost as if she were dying, her face all bathed in tears, as white as her pillow.

Ah! that is how she appeared to me, it was dying that I saw her, the morning when the doctors put her to sleep with chloroform; and she, feeling that she was slowly sinking into the insensibility of death, tried two or three times to stretch out her arms to me, tried to call me. I left the room, completely overcome. For two long hours, endless hours, I waited, exasperating my suffering by excessive imagination. And my man's being felt a pang of hopeless pity for that poor creature whom the surgeon's steel was violating, not only in her poor flesh, but in the most sacred recesses of her soul, in the most delicate sentiment that a woman can defend—pity for her, and also for the others, for all those tormented by indefinite aspirations towards the idealities of love, abused by the captious dream with which virile desire surrounds them, insensibly captivated with a higher life, but so weak, so sickly, so imperfect, irremediably equal to the females of the beasts by the laws of nature which impose on them the duties of the Species, afflict them with horrible maladies, leave them exposed to all kinds of degeneration. And then, shuddering in every fibre, I saw in them, I saw in all of them, with frightful lucidity the original wound...."

When I reëntered Juliana's room she was still under the influence of the anæsthetic, unconscious, silent, still, like a dying woman. My mother was very pale and very much excited. But it seemed that the operation was a success. The doctors appeared pleased. The assistant surgeon was rolling a bandage. Things gradually began to be orderly and quiet again.

The invalid remained a long time unconscious, and a slight fever set in. In the night she was taken with spasms; laudanum did not quiet her. I was nearly frantic; the spectacle of these horrible sufferings made me think that she was going to die. I no longer know either what I said or what I did. I suffered with her.

The following day the condition of the patient improved; then, from day to day, the improvement continued. Her strength came back very slowly.

I did not quit her bedside. I showed a kind of ostentation in recalling to her, by my acts, the nurse of the old days; but my actual feeling was very different. It was not always the feeling of a brother only. It often happened to me that my mind was preoccupied with a phrase written by my mistress, at the very moment that I was reading to her some chapter from one of her favorite books. I did not succeed in forgetting the Absent. Nevertheless, when in replying to a letter I felt myself a little distracted and almost bored, during those strange respites that are still left to us by a strong passion the object of which is far from us, I thought I recognized by this sign that I no longer loved, and I repeated to myself: "Who knows?"

One day, in my presence, my mother said to Juliana:

"When you are up, when you can walk, we'll all go together to the Badiola; won't we, Tullio?"

Juliana looked at me.

"Yes, mother," I replied, without hesitation, without reflection. "But first, Juliana and I will go to the Lilacs."

And she looked at me again, and she smiled, an unexpected, indescribable smile, with an almost infantile expression of credulity. It looked like the smile of a sick baby to whom has been made a great promise which it did not hope for. And she lowered her eyelids; but she continued to smile, and her half-closed eyes seemed to contemplate something, far away, very far. And the smile faded away, faded away, without disappearing.

How she pleased me then! How I adored her at that moment! How I felt that nothing in the world equals the simple emotion of kindness!

Infinite kindness emanated from this creature, penetrated all my being, filled my heart. She was lying on the bed, supported by two or three pillows; her face, amid the mass of untied brown hair, seemed of extraordinarily delicate mould, a sort of visible immateriality. She had on a night-dress tightly closed at the neck, tight around the wrists, and her hands rested flat on the counterpane, so pale that they were only distinguishable from the linen by the blue of their veins.

I took one of these hands (my mother had just left the room), and I said in a low tone:

"So we'll return there—to the Lilacs."

"Yes," replied the invalid.

And we became silent, to prolong our emotion, to preserve our illusion. We both knew the profound meaning concealed under these few whispered words. A sagacious instinct warned us not to insist, not to define anything, not to go too far. If we had said a word more we should have found ourselves face to face with the exclusive realities of the illusion on which our souls existed and in which, imperceptibly, they lost themselves with rapturous dreams.

One afternoon—we were almost always alone—we were reading, stopping every now and then, bent together over the same page, and following the same lines with our eyes. It was a volume of poetry, and we were giving to the verses an intensity of meaning which they did not possess. Silent ourselves, we spoke to each other by the mouth of the poet. I myself marked with my nail the lines which seemed to interpret to my thoughts:

Je veux, guidé par vous, beaux yeux aux flammes douces,

Par toi conduit, ô main où tremblera ma main,

Marcher droit, que ce soit par des sentiers de mousses

Ou que rocs et cailloux encombrent le chemin,

Oui, je veux marcher droit et calme dans la Vie ...

And she, after reading, sank back for an instant on her pillows, her eyes closed, and with an almost imperceptible smile on her lips pointed to the passage:

Toi la bonté, toi le sourire,

N'es-tu pas le conseil aussi,

Le bon conseil loyal et brave ...

But on her breast I saw the batiste follow the rhythm of respiration with an easy grace which began to disturb as also the feeble perfume of iris which was exhaled by bedclothes and pillows. I hoped and I expected that seized by a sudden languor, she would put her arm around my neck and put her cheek to mine, so close that I could feel myself touched by the corner of her mouth. She laid her slender thumb on the book, and with her nail made a mark on the margin, guiding my emotion:

La voix vous fut connue (et chère?),

Mais, à present, elle est voilée

Comme une veuve désolée...

Elle dit, la voix reconnue,

Que la bonté, c'est notre vie...

Elle parle aussi de la gloire,

D'être simple sans plus attendre,

Et de noces d'or, et du tendre

Bonheur d'une paix sans victoire.

Acceuillez la voix qui persiste

Dans son naïf épithalame.

Allez, rien n'est meilleur à l'âme

Que de faire une âme moins triste!

I seized her wrist, and, slowly, I lowered my head until I touched with my lips the hollow of her hand; and I murmured:

"Could you—forget?"

She closed my mouth and uttered her great word:

"Silence!"

At that moment my mother came in to announce the visit of Signora Talice. I noticed Juliana's impatient little gesture, and I felt irritated myself against the importunate visitor. Juliana sighed:

"Oh! mio Dio!"

"Tell her that Juliana is sleeping," I suggested to my mother in an almost supplicating tone.

She made me a sign that the visitor was waiting in the adjoining room. We must see her.

This Signora Talice was a spiteful and fastidious gossip. Every few moments she glanced at me with curiosity. In the course of conversation, my mother happened to say that I had sat with the invalid all day almost without interruption, and Signora Talice, looking fixedly at me, said in a tone of manifest irony:

"What an ideal husband!"

She finally irritated me so that I found a pretext to leave the room.

I left the house. On the steps I met Maria and Natalia coming in with their governess. As usual they assailed me with an infinity of caresses, and Maria, the elder, handed me several letters that the janitor had given her. Among them I suddenly recognized the letter of the Absent. And then I escaped from their caresses with a sort of impatience. As soon as I was in the street I stopped to read.

It was a short letter, but full of passion, with two or three of those singularly incisive phrases that Teresa knew how to write when she wished to disturb me. She announced her return to Florence on the twentieth to the twenty-sixth of that month, and said she hoped to meet me as before. She promised to furnish me with more precise particulars concerning the rendezvous.

In a second all the phantoms of the recent illusions and emotions became detached from my mind like the flowers of a tree shaken by a gust of wind. And, as the fallen flowers are forever lost to the tree, so these things of the soul were lost to me. They became foreign to my being. I made an effort, I tried to regain possession of myself; I did not succeed. I began to walk through the streets, aimlessly; I entered the shop of a confectioner, I entered a book-shop; I bought bonbons and books, mechanically. Twilight fell; the street lamps were lighted; the pavements were crowded; two or three ladies bowed to me from their carriages; one of my friends passed quickly, laughing and talking with his mistress, who held a bunch of roses in her hand. The maleficent breath of fashionable life penetrated me, awakened my curiosity, my desires, my jealousies. My blood seemed suddenly aflame. Certain images, extraordinarily distinct, passed before my mind like a lightning flash. The Absent regained possession of me merely by certain "expressions" of her letter, and all my desires went out towards her, madly.

But when the first tumult was appeased, while I was re-ascending the steps of my house, I understood the gravity of what had taken place, of what I had done; I understood that, a few hours before, I had effectively tightened the bond, I had pledged my faith, I had given a promise, a tacit but solemn promise, to a creature still weak and ill. I could not break my word without infamy, and I was conscious of it. Then I was sorry I had not mistrusted this deceitful compassion; I was sorry I had dwelt too long on this sentimental languor! And I examined minutely my acts, my words, of that day, with the cold subtilty of a dishonest tradesman who seeks a quarrel in order to avoid the obligations of a contract he has made. My last words had been too serious. That "Could you forget?" pronounced in that tone, after the reading of those verses, had had the value of a definite understanding. And that "Silence!" of Juliana had been the seal of the contract.

"But," I thought, "was she really convinced, this time, of my repentance? Has she not always been a little sceptical concerning my good impulses?" And I saw once more that weak and unbelieving smile that, on former occasions, I had already noticed on her lips. "If in the secret recesses of her heart she had not believed, or, again, if her illusion had suddenly faded away, then perhaps my retraction would be less serious, would not greatly wound her or offend her. There would merely have been an episode without consequence, and I should resume my former liberty. The Lilacs would still be a dream to her." But then I saw the other smile, that new, unexpected, credulous smile which had appeared on her lips at the mention of the Lilacs. What could I do? What should I decide? What attitude should I take? Teresa Raffo's letter had the same effect on me as a severe burn.

When I reëntered Juliana's room, I noticed at once that she was waiting for me. She seemed pleased. Her eyes shone brilliantly. Her cheeks had more color.

"Wherever have you been?" she asked, laughing.

"Signora Talice drove me away," I replied.

She laughed again, a limpid and young laugh which transfigured her. I held out to her the books and the box of sweetmeats.

"For me?" she cried joyously, like a greedy child.

And she hastened to open the box with graceful little gestures, which aroused in my mind fragments of distant memories.

"For me?"

She took a bonbon, made a motion as if about to carry it to her mouth, hesitated a little, let it fall back, thrust aside the box, and said:

"Later, later——"

"You know, Tullio," explained my mother, "she's not eaten anything yet. She wanted to wait for you."

"Oh, I haven't told you yet," interrupted Juliana, her face flushing. "I haven't told you yet that the doctor came during your absence. He said I am much better. I may get up on Thursday. You understand, Tullio? I may get up on Thursday."

Then she added:

"In ten or fifteen days, at the most, I shall even be able to undertake a journey."

After a moment's reverie she added, in a lower tone:

"The Lilacs!"

So that had been the unique object of her thoughts, the unique object of her dreams! She had believed; she believed. I had difficulty in dissimulating my anguish. I busied myself, perhaps with excessive eagerness, with the preparations for her little dinner. It was I who put the portable table on her knees.

She followed all my movements with a caressing look that pained me. "Ah! if she could guess!" All at once my mother exclaimed naïvely:

"How beautiful you are to-night, Juliana!"

In fact, an extraordinary animation lit up her features, brightened her eyes, completely rejuvenated her. My mother's exclamation made her blush, and during the whole evening her cheeks preserved a reflection of that redness. She repeated:

"On Thursday I will get up. Thursday—in three days! I shan't know how to walk any more——"

She spoke persistently of her recovery, of our approaching departure. She asked my mother for news of the villa, of the garden.

"I planted a willow branch near the basin, the last time I was there. Do you remember, Tullio? Who knows if we shall find it again——"

"Yes," replied my mother, beaming; "yes, you will find it again. It has grown since then; it is a tree now. Ask Federico."

"Really? Really? Tell me, mother——"

It seemed as if at that moment this trifling detail had incalculable importance in her eyes. She began to prattle. And I was astonished that she could venture so far into the illusion. I wondered at the transfiguration that was the result of her dream. "Why, this time, has she believed? How comes it that she permits herself this transport? What gives her this unusual confidence?" And the thought of my approaching infamy, inevitable perhaps, froze the blood in my veins. "Why inevitable? Shall I never be able to free myself, then? I must, I must keep my promise. My mother was a witness of my promise. I will keep it at any cost." And, with an inward effort, I might say with an upheaval of my conscience, I emerged from the tumult of my uncertainties, and I went back to Juliana by a sudden conversion of my soul.

I found her as charming as ever, full of animation, life and youth. She reminded me of the Juliana of former days—the Juliana who, so often, amidst the calm of domestic life, I had suddenly taken in my arms, as if in a sudden frenzy.

"No, no, mother; do not make me drink any more," she pleaded, staying the hand of my mother, who was pouring out some wine for her. "I have already drunk too much without noticing it. What delicious Chablis it is! Do you remember, Tullio?"

She laughed, looking straight at me as she recalled the love memories over which floated the delicate vapor of that pale, slightly bitter wine, her favorite beverage.

"Yes, I remember," I replied.

She half-closed her eyes, with a slight trembling of the lashes. Then she said:

"It's warm, isn't it? My ears are burning."

She took her head between her hands to feel how hot it was. The lamp, placed near the bed, threw a bright light on her long profile, causing to glitter the few golden threads in the depths of her hair, where the delicate and tiny ear peeped out. While I helped to clear the table (my mother and the servant had gone out for a moment and were in an adjoining room), she called me in a low voice:

"Tullio!"

And, drawing me furtively to her, she kissed my cheek.

Did she not mean by this kiss to reclaim me entirely, body and soul, forever? Did not such an act, coming from her, so reserved and proud, signify that she wished to forget all, that she had already forgotten all, so as to live once more a new life with me? How could she have yielded to my love with more grace, with greater confidence? In an instant, the sister became once more the lover. The impeccable sister had retained in her blood and in the depths of her veins the memory of my caresses, the organic recollection of sensations so vivid and tenacious in women. In thinking of it again when I found myself alone, I had a fleeting vision of distant days, of evenings long gone by. A June twilight, warm and roseate, in which floated mysterious perfumes, dangerous to the solitary, to those who regret, or those who desire. I enter the room. She is seated near the window with a book on her knees, very, very pale, in the attitude of one about to faint.

"Juliana!" She shudders and recovers herself. "What are you doing?" "Nothing," she answers. But an indefinable change, as if she were undergoing an inward struggle to repress something, passed in her black eyes. How many times had her poor flesh been compelled to suffer these tortures since the day of the sad renouncement! My mind dwelt upon the images raised by the recent trifling incident. The singular excitement displayed by Juliana reminded me again of divers exhibitions of her physical and extraordinarily acute sensibility. Perhaps the malady had increased, had provoked this sensibility. And I, curious and perverse, thought I should be able to see the fragile life of the convalescent inflame and dissolve under my caresses; I thought, too, that this voluptuousness would have, as it were, a flavor of sin. "If she died from it," I thought. Certain words of the surgeon recurred to me in a sinister way. And, because of the cruelty that is at the heart of every sensual man, the peril, instead of frightening me, attracted me. I lingered over this examination of my feelings with that species of bitter complaisance, mixed with disgust, that I brought to bear upon the analysis of all the inner manifestations in which I believed I discovered a proof of the natural wickedness of man. Why does human nature possess that horrible faculty of feeling acute pleasure when one knows one is harming the creature who gives the pleasure? Why is the germ of this execrable sadic perversion to be found in every man who loves and desires?

It was these unhealthy reflections, rather than the first instinctive impulse of kindness and pity, that strengthened during the night my plans in favor of the Abused. Even from a distance, the Absent still empoisoned me. To conquer the resistance of my egotism, it was necessary for me to oppose to the thought of the delicious depravity of that woman the image of a new depravity, very choice, that I promised myself to cultivate at leisure in the virtuous security of my own house. Then, with the alchemistic talent that I possessed for combining the several products of my mind, I analyzed the series of the characteristic states of soul determined in me by Juliana at the various epochs of our common existence, and I drew from it certain elements that I used in the construction of a new, artificial state, singularly appropriate for increasing the intensity of the sensations that I wished to experience. Thus, for instance, with the object of rendering still more acute the savor of the sin that attracted me and exalted my wicked phantasy, I sought to picture to myself the moments in which I had most deeply expressed the fraternal feeling, the moments in which Juliana had seemed most like a sister.

And he who dwelt on these wretched maniacal subtleties was the man who, a few hours before, had felt his heart palpitate with a simple emotion of kindness at the glimmer of an unexpected smile! These contradictory crises made up his life—an illogical, fragmentary, incoherent life. There were in him all kinds of tendencies, the possibility of every opposite, and, between these opposites, an infinity of intermediary degrees, and, between these tendencies, an infinity of combinations. According to the weather and according to the place, according to the accidental shock of circumstances, of an insignificant fact, of a word, according to the inner influences, even still more obscure, the permanent basis of his being assumed the most changing, the most fugitive, the strangest aspects. In him a special organic condition corresponded to every special tendency while strengthening it, and this tendency became a centre of attraction toward which converged all the conditions and tendencies directly associated, and the association spread further and further. Then his centre of gravity was displaced; his personality was changed to another personality. Silent floods of blood and ideas caused to blossom on the permanent basis of his being, either gradually or all at once, new souls. He became multanime.

I insist on this episode because really it marks the decisive point.

The following morning, on awakening, I retained only a confused notion of all that had happened. Cowardice and anguish seized upon me again, just as soon as I had before my eyes a second letter from Teresa Raffo, who decided upon the 21st for our meeting at Florence and gave me precise instructions. The 21st was a Sunday, and on Thursday, the 18th, Juliana rose for the first time. I argued for a long time with myself all the possibilities, and, arguing, I began to compromise. "There is certainly no doubt about it; the rupture is necessary, inevitable. But how to break off? Under what pretext? Can I announce my decision to Teresa in a mere letter? My last letter to her was still warm with passion, filled with longing. How can I justify the sudden change? Does the poor woman deserve so unexpected and brutal a blow? She has loved me much, she loves me still, and there was a time when she braved dangers for my sake. And I too have loved her.... I still love her. Our passion, powerful and strange, is known; she is envied, and she is also watched. How many men aspire to take my place! Too numerous to count." In making a rapid review of my most redoubtable rivals, of my most probable successors, I pictured to myself their forms. "Is there in Rome a woman more blonde, more fascinating, more desirable than she?" The same sudden fire that had heated my blood the evening before gushed through every vein, and the idea of voluntarily renouncing her seemed to me absurd, inadmissible. "No, no; I shall never have the courage; I never will and never can."

This tumult calmed, I followed my useless debate, at the same time retaining the conviction in the depths of my being that, when the hour came, it would be impossible for me not to go. Yet I had the courage, when I quitted Juliana's room still vibrating with emotion, I had the supreme courage to write to her who claimed me: "I will not come." I invented a pretext; and, I remember clearly, a kind of instinct made me choose one that would not appear very important to her. "So you hope that she will pay no attention to the pretext, and will command you to go?" asked an inner voice. I found myself without an answer to this sarcasm, and an irritation, an atrocious anxiety, took possession of me, and gave me no more peace. I made unheard-of efforts to dissimulate in the presence of Juliana and my mother; I carefully avoided being left alone with the poor abused one; each moment I thought I read in her gentle, humid eyes the shadow of a doubt, I thought I saw a cloud pass over her pure brow.

On Wednesday I received an imperious and threatening telegram. Did I not rather expect it? "Either you will come, or you will never see me again. Answer." I answered: "I will come."

As soon as I had done it, under the impulse of that species of unconscious superexcitation that, in life, accompanies every decisive act, I found myself singularly solaced by the view of the determined turn that events had taken. The feeling of my own irresponsibility, of the necessity of what had occurred and what was about to happen, became very profound. "If, though knowing all the evil that I do, though condemning myself, I cannot act in any other manner, it is a sign that I obey an unknown superior power. I am the victim of a cruel, ironical, irresistible destiny."

Nevertheless, I had scarcely put foot on the threshold of Juliana's room when I felt the pressure on my heart of an enormous weight, and I stopped, swaying, between the portières that hid me. "A look will suffice her to divine all," I thought, desperate. And I was on the point of turning back. But in a voice that had never before seemed so gentle to me, she said:

"Is it you, Tullio?"

Then I advanced a step. She exclaimed, on seeing me:

"What ails you? Are you not well?"

"A dizziness ... It is already gone," I answered. And I felt reassured on thinking: "She has not guessed."

In fact she had not the slightest suspicion; and it seemed to me strange that it should be so. Should I prepare her for the brutal blow? Should I speak frankly, or concoct some falsehood out of pity for her? Or would it not be better to go away unexpectedly, without letting her know, and leave a letter for her containing my confession? What was the best way of rendering my effort less painful, of making her surprise less cruel?

Alas! in this difficult debate, a grievous instinct inclined me to consider my own comfort more than hers. And without the least doubt I should have chosen the method of the sudden departure and the explanatory letter, if I had not been prevented from doing so out of regard for my mother. It was absolutely necessary to spare my mother, always, at any cost. This time, too, I could not rid myself of the inner sarcasm: "At any cost. What generosity! But it is very easy for you to return to the old conventions, and, further, very safe. This time, also, if you exact it, the victim will endeavor to smile, while she feels she is dying. Count on her, therefore, and do not concern yourself about the rest, O generous heart!"

At times, truly, man finds a singular joy in feeling a sincere and supreme contempt for himself.

"What are you thinking of, Tullio?" Juliana inquired of me with a naïve gesture, touching me between the eyebrows with the tip of her finger, as if to arrest my thought.

I took her hand without replying. And my very silence, that appeared grave to me, sufficed to modify anew the condition of my mind. There was so much gentleness in the voice, in the gesture, of the poor deluded woman that I became tender, and felt arise the enervating emotion that causes tears to flow and which is called pity for one's self. I felt a keen desire to be pitied. At the same time, an inner voice whispered: "Profit by this disposition of your soul; but, for the time being, reveal nothing. By slightly exaggerating, you will succeed in weeping, without difficulty. You well know the prodigious effect on a woman of the tears of a man whom she loves. Juliana will be distracted by them; and you yourself will seem to be crushed by some terrible grief. Then, to-morrow, when you tell her the truth, the recollection of your tears will raise you in her regard. She may think: 'This is then the reason why he wept yesterday. Poor fellow!' And it will be to your advantage not to be taken for an odious egotist; on the contrary, people will think that you have vainly fought with all your might against the evil influences that have possession of you, and that you are afflicted with some incurable malady, that you bear in your bosom a broken heart. Profit, therefore, by the opportunity."

"Have you anything on your conscience?" asked Juliana, in a low, caressing voice, full of confidence.

I bent my head, and, assuredly, was affected. But the preoccupation of these useful tears caused a diversion in my feelings by interrupting the spontaneity, and, in consequence, retarded the physiological phenomena of tears. "If I could not weep? Suppose the tears do not come?" I thought with ridiculous and puerile fear, as if my fate depended on this slight material fact that my will did not suffice to produce. And yet a voice always the same whispered inwardly: "What a mistake! What a mistake! No opportunity could be more propitious. One can scarcely see one's self in this room. What effect sobbing would have in the dark!"

"You do not answer me, Tullio," went on Juliana, after a short silence, passing her hand over my face and through my hair to compel me to raise my face. "You know you can tell me everything."

Ah! in truth, never since then have I heard a human voice of such sweetness. Even my mother had never spoken to me like that.

My eyes became moist, and I felt between my lids the warmth of the tears. "Quick, this is the moment, you must burst out." But it was only a solitary tear. And (shall I make the humiliating confession? but it is in the comedy of similar puerilities that the manifestations of the major part of human emotions are lowered)—and I raised my face to permit Juliana to notice it, and for an instant I felt an insane anxiety because I feared that, in the dark, she would be unable to see the tear glisten. To attract her attention to it I gave a deep sigh, as one does when trying to repress a sob. Bringing her face close to mine, so as to examine it more closely and made uneasy by my prolonged silence, she repeated:

"You don't answer me?"

Then she noticed it; and to be more certain, she seized my head, and drew it back with an almost brutal movement.

"You are crying."

Her voice had changed.

I freed myself as if confused. I rose to flee, like one who is no longer master of an overflowing affliction.

"Adieu, adieu! Let me go. Adieu, Juliana!"

And I left the room precipitately.

When I was alone, I felt disgusted with myself.

It was the evening of the party given in honor of the invalid. A few hours later, when I went back to her to be present as usual at her slight meal, I found that my mother was with her. As soon as my mother saw me she cried:

"Well, Tullio, to-morrow is the great day."

Juliana and I looked at each other, both of us anxious. Then we spoke of the morrow, of the hour at which she should rise, of a thousand petty details, but with a kind of effort. We were preoccupied. I wished inwardly that my mother would not leave us alone.

I was fortunate; my mother left us only once, and came in again almost immediately. In the interval, Juliana asked me rapidly:

"What was the matter with you a short time ago? Won't you tell me?"

"Nothing, nothing."

"See how you will spoil my pleasure!"

"No, no ... I'll tell you, I'll tell you ... later. Forget it for the present, please."

My mother came in with Maria and Natalia. But the tone in which Juliana had pronounced those few words sufficed to convince me that she suspected nothing of the truth. Perhaps she supposed that my sorrow arose from a sombre recollection of my ineffaceable and inexpiable past, or supposed that I was tortured by remorse for having done her so much wrong and by the fear of not deserving her full pardon.

The following morning, I was again much agitated. In obedience to her wish I was waiting in an adjoining room, when I heard her call me in her limpid tones:

"Come here, Tullio!"

I entered. She was standing up, and seemed taller, more svelte, more fragile. Robed in a sort of ample and wavy tunic, with long straight folds, she smiled, hesitating, scarcely able to stand, with her arms stretched out as if to maintain her equilibrium, turning by turns toward me and my mother.

My mother looked at her with an inexpressible expression of tenderness, ready to give her support. I, too, stretched out my hands, ready to support her.

"No, no, please," she said; "let me be, let me be. I am strong. I want to walk all alone as far as the armchair."

She advanced one foot, and made a step slowly. Her face lit up with an infantile joy.

"Take care, Juliana!"

She made two or three steps more; then, seized by a sudden fear, a foolish dread that she was about to fall, she hesitated for an instant between my mother and me, and ended by throwing herself in my arms, on my breast, a dead weight, and trembling as if she were sobbing. On the contrary, she was laughing, a little oppressed by her nervousness; and, as she wore no corset, my hands felt through the dress how meagre and frail she was, my breast felt each motion of the palpitating and sickly form, my nostrils respired the perfume of her hair, my eyes recognized the little brown mole upon her neck.

"I was afraid," she said in a gasp, laughing and panting; "I was afraid I should fall."

And as she threw back her head without detaching herself from me so as to look at my mother, I caught a slight view of her bloodless gums, the whites of her eyes, and the convulsed appearance of her entire face. I felt as though I were holding in my arms a poor, ill creature, profoundly afflicted by her malady, with debilitated nerves, impoverished veins, and perhaps incurable. But I thought again also of her transfiguration, of the evening of the unexpected kiss; and the labor of charity, of love, and of reform which I was renouncing once more seemed to me a labor of sovereign beauty.

"Tullio, lead me to the arm-chair," she said.

Supporting her with my arm passed around her waist, I led her slowly and gently; I helped her to sit in it; I arranged the down cushions at her back, and I remember that I chose the cushion having the most exquisite shade for her to lean her head upon. Then, in order to slip one beneath her feet, I went down on my knees, and caught a glimpse of her gray stocking, and her little slipper that hid only the tip of her foot. As on that evening, she followed all my movements with affectionate interest. I took a long time to do everything. I went up to a small tea-table, placed on it a vase of fresh flowers, a book, and an ivory paper-cutter. Without having premeditated it, I put into these attentions a shade of affectation.

The ironical voice went on: "Very clever, very clever! Acting like this before your mother will help you considerably. How could she suspect anything after being a witness of such an exhibition of tenderness? Besides, the shade of affectation won't be noticed; the poor woman is a little short-sighted. Go on, go on. Everything is progressing famously. Keep it up!"

"Oh, how nice it is here!" exclaimed Juliana, with a sigh of relief, and half-closing her eyes. "Thank you, Tullio!"

A few minutes later, when my mother had gone out and we were alone, she repeated, in a deeper tone: "Thank you!"

She raised a hand towards me so that I might take it in mine. As her sleeve was large, the gesture exposed the arm almost as far as the elbow. And that white and faithful hand, which offered me love, indulgence, peace, dreamland, oblivion, all that is beautiful and all that is good, trembled in the air a second, stretched towards me as if making the supreme offering.

I believe that at the hour of death, at the precise instant when my sufferings come to an end, it will be that gesture, only that one, that I shall see; amid all the numberless images of my past life, I shall see only that one gesture.

When I look back I do not succeed in reconstructing with exactitude the state of soul in which I found myself. What I can affirm is, that again at that moment I understood the extreme gravity of the situation, and the prime importance of the acts that were being accomplished, or that were about to be accomplished. I had, or I believed I had, perfect lucidity. Two phenomena of my conscience were developing without becoming confounded, perfectly distinct, parallel. In one of them predominated, joined to pity for the poor creature whom I was on the point of striking, a bitter sentiment of regret for the offering that I was about to reject. In the other predominated, joined to the deep, eager desire for the absent mistress, an egotistical sentiment that busied itself in coldly examining the circumstances most suitable for favoring my impunity. This parallelism gave to my inner life an incredible intensity and acceleration.

The decisive hour had come. Having to start the following morning, I could not temporize any longer. So that the affair should not seem too ambiguous and altogether too sudden, I must prepare my mother for my departure that very morning at breakfast, and allege some plausible pretext. I must also tell Juliana, before telling my mother, so as to prevent any possible contretemps. "And suppose Juliana should rebel? Suppose, in a moment of grief and indignation, she reveals the truth to my mother? How can I obtain from her a promise of silence, a new act of abnegation?" Up to the last moment I argued with myself. "Will she understand immediately, at the first word? And if she should not understand? If she should innocently ask me the object of my journey? What could I answer? But she will understand. It is impossible that she has not already learned from one of her friends, from Signora Talice, for instance, that Teresa Raffo has left Rome."

My strength began to give way. I could not have borne much longer the crisis that became more acute each moment. With a contraction of all my nerves, I came to a decision; and since she was speaking, I determined that she herself should furnish me the opportunity for delivering the blow.

She spoke of a thousand things, and especially of the future, with unaccustomed volubility. That strange, convulsed appearance that I had already noticed in her seemed more apparent. I was still standing behind her chair; up to then I had avoided her eyes by adroit manoeuvring in the room, remaining attentive behind her chair, busy either in arranging the window curtains or straightening the books in the little bookcase, or in picking up from the carpet the petals of a bouquet of roses that had shed its leaves. Standing up, I looked at the parting in her hair, her long and curved eyelashes, the light palpitation of her bosom, and her hands, her beautiful hands extended on the arms of the arm-chair, lying flat, just as on that day, white as on that day, "when they could be distinguished from the linen only by the azure of their veins."

Oh, that day! Not more than a week had gone by since then. Why did it seem to me to be so far away?

Standing behind her, in that state of extreme tension, and, so to speak, on the watch, I imagined that perhaps she instinctively felt the danger hovering over her head: I believed I divined in her a sort of vague uneasiness. Once more I felt sick at heart.

She finally said:

"To-morrow, if I am better, you will take me out on the terrace, in the open air."

I interrupted her.

"To-morrow, I shall not be here."

She trembled at my strange voice. I added, without waiting:

"I am going..."

Then, making a violent effort to loosen my tongue, and terrified like a man who must strike a second blow to put his victim to death, I added hastily:

"I am going to Florence."

"Ah!"

She had suddenly understood. She turned round with a rapid movement, she twisted herself on her cushions to look me in the face; and in that tragic pose, I saw again the whites of her eyes and her bloodless gum.

"Juliana!" I stammered, without finding anything else to say to her, bending toward her, fearing she would faint.

But she lowered her eyelids, sank back, withdrew into herself, so to speak, as if chilled by severe cold. She remained thus for several minutes, her eyes closed, lips compressed, motionless. Only the pulsations of the carotid artery, visible at the neck, and a few convulsive contractions of her hands indicated that she was still alive.

Was not this a crime? Yes, this was the first of my crimes, and not the least, without a doubt.

I went away under terrible circumstances. My absence lasted more than a week. On my return and the days following, I was astonished myself at my almost cynical impudence. I was bewitched by a sort of malefice that suspended in me every moral sense and rendered me capable of the worst injustices, the worst cruelties. This time again Juliana exhibited prodigious force of character; this time again she was able to keep silent. She appeared to me wrapped up in her silence as if in an impenetrable adamantine wall.

She went to the Badiola with her daughters and my mother. My brother accompanied them. I remained in Rome.

It was then that began for me a frightful period of sombre misery, the recollection of which suffices to fill me with disgust and humiliation.

Harassed by a feeling that, more than any other, stirs up in man the dregs of his being, I suffered every torture that a woman can make a feeble, passionate, and ever-wakeful soul suffer. The fire of a terrible sensual jealousy, kindled by suspicion, dried up in me every honest source, fed on the dregs deposited in the baser depths of my animal nature.

Never had Teresa Raffo seemed to me to be so desirable as since the day when I indissolubly associated her with an ignoble image and a stain. And she made herself a weapon of my very contempt to excite my covetousness. Atrocious agonies, abject joys, dishonoring submission, cowardly complacencies proposed and unblushingly accepted, tears more acrid than all the poisons, sudden frenzies that drove me almost to the confines of dementia, such violent plunges into the abyss of indulgence that for many days after I lay in a stupefied state, every misery, every ignominy of the lower passions exasperated by jealousy—all, yes, I have known all. I became a stranger in my own house; the presence of Juliana became an encumbrance to me. Sometimes entire weeks passed without my addressing a single word to her; absorbed in my inner torture, I did not see her, I did not listen to her. At certain moments, when I raised my eyes towards her, I was surprised at her pallor, at the expression of her face, by such and such a detail of her features, as if these things were new, unexpected, strange; I did not succeed in entirely reconquering the notion of the reality. Every act of her life was unknown to me; I felt no desire to question her, to know anything; I felt neither preoccupation, interest, nor fear in regard to her. An inexplicable coldness acted as a cuirass against her. And still more: sometimes I felt a kind of vague and inexplicable rancor against her. One day I saw her laugh, and that laugh irritated me, almost put me in a passion.

Another day I had a shock on hearing her singing in a distant room. She was singing an air from "Orphée."

"Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?"

That was the first time she had sung while going through the house for a long time; it was the first time I heard her for a long time.

"Why was she singing? Was she then happy? To what condition of her soul does that unusual effusion correspond?" An inexplicable agitation seized me. Without thinking, I went up to her, calling her by name.

When she saw me enter her room she was surprised, and remained for a moment speechless; she was evidently startled.

"Are you singing?" I said, so as to say something, embarrassed and astonished myself at the eccentricity of what I was doing.

She smiled a hesitating smile, not knowing what to answer, not knowing what attitude to assume toward me. And I thought I read in her eyes a grieved curiosity, the fugitive expression of which I had already noticed more than once—the compassionate curiosity with which one gazes at a person suspected of insanity, a maniac. As a matter of fact, I saw myself in a mirror opposite, and my face looked emaciated, my eyes sunken, my mouth puffed up—that feverish appearance that I had had for a month.

"Are you dressing to go out?" I asked, still disturbed, almost ashamed, not finding any other question to ask her, preoccupied only with avoiding silence.

"Yes."

It was in the morning, in November. She was standing near a table trimmed with lace, and on which scintillated the scattered innumerable little articles that serve nowadays to beautify women. She wore a dress of vigonia, of a dark color, and held in her hand a light-colored shell comb mounted in silver. The dress, very simple in cut, set off her slim, graceful figure. A large bouquet of white chrysanthemums, placed on the table, reached up as far as her shoulder. The sun of the St. Martin's summer entered through the window, and in the air there was a perfume of chypre, or some other odor I could not recognize.

"What perfume do you use now?" I asked.

"Crab-apple," she replied.

"I like it," I said.

She took a small bottle from the table, and handed it to me. I inhaled it deeply, so as to be doing something, and to gain time to prepare some other phrase. I did not succeed in dissipating my confusion, or in recovering my assurance. I felt that all intimacy between us was at an end. She seemed to me to be another woman. And yet the air from "Orphée" still surged through my soul, still disturbed me:

"Que ferai-je sans Eurydice?"

In that warm and golden light, amidst that delightful perfume, among these objects impressed with feminine grace, the echo of the ancient melody seemed to put the palpitation of a secret life, to shed a shadow of some strange mystery.

"The air that you sang just now is very beautiful," I said, obeying an impulse that came from my uneasiness.

"Yes, very beautiful," she cried.

A question rose to my lips: "Why are you singing?" but I repressed it and began to seek in myself the reasons of the curiosity which tormented me.

There was an interval of silence. She ran her finger-nail across the teeth of the comb, producing a light, grating noise. This grating is a circumstance that I recall with perfect clearness.

"You were dressing to go out. Go on," I said.

"I have only to put on my jacket and hat. What time is it?"

"A quarter to eleven."

"What! So late already?"

She took her hat and veil, and sat down before the glass. I watched her. Another question rose to my lips: "Where are you going?" Yet, although it might appear quite natural, I restrained myself again, and continued to observe Juliana attentively.

She reappeared to me once more what she was in reality—a young and stylish woman, a gentle and noble face full of a refined physical delicacy, radiant with an intense moral expression; in short, an adorable woman, and one who could be as delightful a mistress for the flesh as for the mind. "Suppose she were really someone's mistress?" I thought then. "Assuredly, it is impossible but that many men have hovered around her; everyone knows how I neglect her, everyone knows how I wrong her. Suppose she has yielded, or is about to yield? Suppose she has at last considered the sacrifice of her youth to be useless and unjust? Suppose she was at last grown tired of her abnegation? Suppose she has made the acquaintance of a man superior to me, some delicate and deep seducer, who has inspired her with renewed curiosity, who has taught her to forget her faithless husband? Suppose I have already lost her heart, which I have so often trampled upon without pity and without remorse?" A sudden fright seized me, and the anguish was so keen that I thought: "That is what I will do; I will confess my suspicion to Juliana. I will look into the depths of her eyes and say, 'Are you still faithful?' And I will know the truth. She is incapable of lying."

"Incapable of lying? Ah! ah! ah! A woman! ... What do you know about it? A woman is capable of everything. Never forget that. Sometimes the large cloak of heroism serves but to hide half a dozen lovers. Sacrifice! Abnegation! Those are appearances, words. Who will ever know the truth? Swear, if you dare, that your wife is faithful to you; and I speak, not of the present faithfulness, but of that which preceded the episode of the illness. Swear in perfect assurance, if you dare." And the wicked voice (ah! Teresa Raffo, how your poison acts), the perfidious voice made me shudder.

"Do not be impatient, Tullio," said Juliana, almost timidly. "Will you stick this pin in my veil—here?"

She raised her arms and held them over her head to fasten the veil, and her white fingers tried in vain to fasten it.

Her pose was full of grace. The white fingers made me think: "How long it is since we clasped hands! Oh, the frank and warm clasps that her hand used to give me, as if to assure me that she bore me no ill-will for any offence! Now that hand is perhaps defiled." And while I fastened the veil, I felt a sudden revulsion in thinking of the possible pollution.

She arose, and I helped her again to put on her cloak. Two or three times our eyes met by stealth, and again I observed in hers a sort of anxious curiosity. Perhaps she was asking herself: "Why did he come in here? Why is he staying here? What does that absent-minded air mean? What does he want with me? What has happened to him?"

"Excuse me a moment," she said.

And she left the room.

I heard her call Miss Edith, the governess.

When I was alone my eyes turned involuntarily towards the small desk littered with letters, cards, and books. I approached, and my eyes ran for an instant over the papers, as if they sought to discover—what? The proof, perhaps? I dismissed this base and stupid suspicion. I looked at a book covered with an antique cloth, with a small dagger stuck between the leaves. She had not yet finished reading it, and had cut only about half of it. It was the latest novel by Filippo Arborio, The Secret. I read on the frontispiece an autographic dedication by the author:

TO YOU,
JULIANA HERMIL, TURRIS EBURNEA,

I offer this unworthy homage.

F. ARBORIO.
All Saints' Day, '85.

So Juliana knew the novelist? And what did Juliana think of him? I conjured up the writer's fine and seductive face as I had seen it several times in public. There was certainly much in him that must please Juliana. According to current gossip, he pleased women. His romances, full of a complicated psychology, at times very subtle, often false, disturbed sentimental souls, fired restless imaginations, taught with supreme grace contempt of common life. An Agony, The True Catholic, Angelica Doni, Giorgio Aliora, The Secret, suggested an intense vision of life, as if life were a vast conflagration of innumerable ardent figures. Each of his characters fought for his chimera, in a hopeless duel against reality.

Had not this extraordinary artist, who in his books appeared to be, so to speak, like a distilled quintessence of pure spirit, also exerted his fascination on me? Had I not said of his Giorgio Aliora that it was a fraternal work? Had I not found in certain of his literary creations strange resemblances with my inner being? And suppose the strange affinity that there is between us facilitated his work of seduction, perhaps already undertaken? Suppose Juliana was yielding to him, precisely because she had recognized in him some one of those attractions by which, previously, I had made myself adored by her? I thought with a new fright.

She reëntered the room. On seeing me with the book in my hand, she said, with an embarrassed smile, and blushing slightly:

"What are you looking at?"

"Do you know Filippo Arborio?" I asked her immediately, but without any change in my voice, in the most calm and natural voice that I could command.

"Yes," she answered frankly. "He was introduced to me at the Monterisi. He has even been here several times, but you have not had the opportunity of meeting him."

A question rose to my lips: "Why have you never spoken of him to me?" But I restrained it. How could she have mentioned it, since, by my attitude, I had interrupted for a long time past all friendly exchange of news and confidences?

"He is much more simple than his works would lead one to suppose," she continued carelessly, slowly drawing on her gloves. "Have you read The Secret?"

"Yes, I have read it."

"Did you like it?"

Without thinking, and by an instinctive desire to affirm my superiority in Juliana's eyes, I answered:

"No, it is commonplace."

At last she said:

"I am going."

She made a motion to leave. I followed her as far as the antechamber, walking in the wake of the perfume she left behind her, so subtle as to be scarcely perceptible. In the presence of the servant she said only:

"Au revoir."

And, with a light step, she crossed the threshold.

I went back to my room. I opened the window, and leaned out to watch her in the street.

She hurried along, with her light step, on the sunny side of the street, straight on, without turning her head to the right or left. The St. Martin summer shed a delicate gilding over the crystal of the sky; a calm warmth softened the air and conjured up the perfume of the absent violets. An immense sadness weighed on me, crashed me down on the window-sill; gradually it became intolerable.

Rarely in my life have I suffered so much as from that doubt which crumbled at one stroke my faith in Juliana, a faith that had lasted for so many years. Rarely had the flight of an illusion drawn from my soul such cries of anguish. But was it true that the illusion had fled and that the evil was irremediable? I could not, I would not, be persuaded of it.

That great illusion had been the companion of my whole misguided life. It answered not only to the exigencies of my egotism, but also to my æsthetic dream of moral greatness.

"Since moral greatness results from the violence of pains which one triumphs over, it is necessary, so that she may have an opportunity to be heroic, that she should suffer all I have made her suffer." This axiom, which had often succeeded in calming my remorse, was deeply rooted in my mind, and had caused to surge there from the best part of myself an ideal phantom to which I had vowed a sort of platonic cult. Debauched, culpable, tired, I took pleasure in recognizing in the ray of my own existence a soul severe, upright, and strong, an incorruptible soul, and it pleased me to be the object of its love, of an eternal love. All my vice, all my misery, all my feebleness, found a support in this illusion. I believed that for me there was a possible realization of the dream of all intellectual men: to be constantly unfaithful to a constantly faithful woman.

"What are you seeking? All the intoxication of life? Very well! go, run on, intoxicate yourself. In your house a dumb creature remembers and waits, like a veiled image in a sanctuary. The lamp in which you do not put a single drop more of oil burns without ever becoming extinguished. Is not that the dream of all intellectual men?"

And again: "No matter at what hour, no matter after what adventure, you will find her there on your return. She was awaiting your return with confidence, but she will not tell you of her waiting. You will rest your head on her knees and she will caress your temples with her finger-tips, to take away your pain."

I had a presentiment that one day I would return thus; I would end by coming back, after one of those intimate catastrophes that metamorphose a man. All my hopelessnesses were softened by the secret conviction that this refuge could not fail me, and in the depth of my abjectness a little light came to me from that woman who, for love of me and by my work, had raised herself to the summit of greatness and had perfectly realized the form of my ideal.

Would one doubt suffice to destroy all that in a moment?

I repassed from one end to the other the scene that had taken place between Juliana and myself from the moment I had entered the room to the instant she had left it. And it was in vain I attributed a great part of my inner agitation to a special and transient nervous condition; I could not succeed in dissipating the strange impression exactly translated by these words:

"She seemed to me to be another woman."

There was certainly something new about her. But what? Was not Filippo Arborio's dedication in a sense reassuring? Did it not precisely affirm that the Turris Eburnea was impregnable? This glorious qualification had been suggested to the author either simply by the reputation for purity that Juliana Hermil's name bore, or by the non-success of an attempted assault, or, possibly, by the abandonment of a siege undertaken. In consequence, the Ivory Tower still remained unsullied.

While reasoning thus to allay the gnawings of suspicion, I could not remove the confused anxiety that lay at the bottom of my being, as if I feared a sudden apparition of some ironical objection. "You know, Juliana has extraordinarily white skin. She is literally as white as her night-dress. The pious qualification might well hide some profane meaning." But the word unworthy? "Oh! Oh! What subtleties!"

An attack of impatience and anger cut short this humiliating and vain debate. I withdrew from the window, shrugged my shoulders, made two or three turns in the room, mechanically opened a book, then threw it down again. But my anguish did not decrease. "In short," I thought, stopping short, as if to confront some invisible adversary, "to what does all this lead me? Either she has already fallen, and the loss is irreparable; or she is in danger, and in my present situation I cannot interfere to save her; or else she is pure, and then there is no change. In any case, it is not for me to act. What exists, exists of necessity; what is to happen, will of necessity happen. This crisis of suffering will pass. One must wait. How beautiful those white chrysanthemums were that were on Juliana's table just now! I will go and buy a heap more just like them. My rendezvous with Teresa is for two o'clock to-day. I have still almost three hours before me. Did she not tell me, the last time, that she wished to find the fire burning? This will be the first fire of the winter on such a warm day. It seems to me she is in a week of kindness. I only hope it will last! But, at the first opportunity, I shall challenge Eugenio Egano."

My thoughts followed a new course, with sudden checks, with unforeseen divergences. In the midst even of the pictures of the approaching voluptuousness, another contaminating imagination passed like a lightning flash, one that I feared, one from which I should like to flee. Certain audacious and ardent pages of The True Catholic recurred to me. One of these passions aroused the other, and, while suffering from the distinct pains, I confounded the two women in the same pollution, Filippo Arborio and Eugenio Egano in the same hate.

The crisis passed, leaving in my soul a species of vague contempt mixed with rancor against the sister. I drifted away still further from her; I became more and more hardened, more and more careless, more and more reserved. My sad passion for Teresa Raffo became more exclusive, occupied all my faculties, left me no respite. I was really a maniac, a man possessed by a diabolical insanity, devoured by an unknown and frightful malady. My mind has retained of that winter only confused, incoherent souvenirs, interspersed with strange, rare obscurities.

That winter I never encountered Filippo Arborio at my house; but I saw him sometimes in public. One evening, however, I met him in a salle d'armes; and there we became acquainted. We were introduced by the fencing-master, and we exchanged a few words. The gaslight, the creaking of the flooring, the flash and clatter of the foils, the clumsy or graceful attitudes of the swordsmen, the rapid extension of all those bent limbs, the warm and acrid exhalations of all those bodies, the guttural cries, rude interjections, the bursts of laughter—such are the details that my memory furnishes to reconstruct with singular clearness the scene that unrolled itself before us, while we were standing face to face and the master pronounced our names. I again see the gesture with which Filippo Arborio, raising his mask, displayed a heated face all bathed in perspiration. He was panting with fatigue, and somewhat convulsed, like a man unaccustomed to muscular exercise. Instinctively I thought that he would not be a formidable opponent in a duel. I affected also a certain haughtiness; I especially avoided saying anything that bore any reference to his celebrity or to my admiration; I assumed the attitude I would have taken towards a perfect stranger.

"So it is for to-morrow?" said the fencing-master to me, smiling.

"Yes, at ten o'clock."

"Are you going to fight?" asked Arborio, with evident curiosity.

"Yes."

He hesitated a little, and then added:

"May I ask with whom, if it is not an indiscretion?"

"With Eugenio Egano."

I noticed that he would have liked to learn more, but that he was restrained by the coldness of my attitude and my apparent inattention.

"Maestro," I said, "I'll give you five minutes."

I turned my back to go to the dressing-room. At the door I stopped, and glancing back, saw that Arborio had recommenced to fence. One glance sufficed to show me that he was a very poor swordsman.

When, watched by all the persons present, I engaged with the fencing-master, a singular nervous excitement seized upon me and redoubled my energy. I felt Arborio's eyes were fastened on me.

Later on, I saw him again in the dressing-room. The room had a very low ceiling, and was already full of smoke and an acrid, sickening smell of men. All those in it, naked save for their large white dressing-gowns, were smoking and slowly rubbing their chests, arms, shoulders, and chaffing one another loudly. The splashing of the shower-bath alternated with the loud laughter. Two or three times, with an indefinable motion of repulsion, with a start similar to that which a violent physical shock would produce, I saw the frail form of Arborio, whom my eyes sought involuntarily. And, once again, the odious image was formed.

Since then I had no other opportunity to approach or meet him. I ceased to busy myself with him, and, as a consequence, I remarked nothing suspicious in Juliana's behavior. Outside the constantly narrowing circle in which I moved, there no longer existed for me anything lucid, or sensible, or intelligent. Every external impression passed over me like drops of water over red-hot iron, rebounding or evaporating.

Events came one after the other. Toward the end of February, after a last proof of infamy, a definite rupture occurred between Teresa Raffo and myself. I left for Venice, alone.

I remained there about one month in a state of incomprehensible uneasiness, in a sort of stupor that made the fogs seem thicker and the lagoons more silent. There remained to me only the innate sensation of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things. For long hours, I felt no other sensation than that of the persistent and crushing weight of life, and that of the slight pulsation of an artery in my head. For long hours, I endured that strange fascination exerted by the uninterrupted and monotonous murmur of some indistinct thing on the soul. It drizzled; on the water, the fog at times took on lugubrious forms, advancing like spectres, with slow and solemn step. Often I found a sort of imaginary death in a gondola, as in a coffin. When the rower asked where I desired to be taken, I almost always answered by a vague gesture, and I comprehended internally the hopeless sincerity of the answer: "No matter where ... beyond the world."

I came back to Rome during the last days of March. I felt a new sensation of the reality, as if after a long eclipse of conscience. Sometimes, unexpectedly, a timidity, an uneasiness, an unreasoning fear seized me, and I felt as powerless as an infant. I looked about me ceaselessly with unusual attention, to grasp once more the true sense of things, to find again the proper connections, to take note of what was changed and what had disappeared. And, in proportion as I slowly reëntered into the ordinary existence, the equilibrium reëstablished itself in my being, hope revived, and I began to become preoccupied with the future.

I found Juliana's strength much reduced and her health very much changed. She was sadder than ever. We spoke but little and without looking at one another, without opening our hearts. We both sought the society of our two little daughters; and, with their happy innocence, Maria and Natalia filled our long silences with their fresh chatter. One day Maria asked:

"Mamma, shall we go this Easter to the Badiola?"

I answered, without hesitation, instead of her mother:

"Yes, we shall."

Then Maria began to dance around the room in token of her joy, dragging her sister with her. I looked at Juliana.

"Does it suit you that we should go there?" I asked, fearfully, almost humbly.

She consented by a nod.

"I see you are not well," I added, "nor am I well. Perhaps the country ... the spring..."

She was stretched out in an arm-chair, the arms of which supported her white hands, and that attitude recalled another attitude—that of the convalescent on the morning when she first rose, after I had told her.

The departure was decided upon. We made our preparations. A hope shone in the depth of my soul, but I dared not look straight at it.

I.

My first recollection is as follows:

By this, when I began this narrative, I meant: "Among my recollections this is the first in any way connected with the frightful thing."

It was, therefore, in April. We had been at the Badiola for several days.

"Ah! my children," my mother had said, with her unceremonious candor, "how pale you both look! Oh! that Rome, that Rome. To put some color in your cheeks you must stay in the country with me for a long, long time."

"Yes," Juliana had answered, with a smile; "yes, mother, we will stay as long as you wish."

That smile often appeared on Juliana's lips when my mother was by. And, although her eyes invariably retained their melancholy, that smile was so sweet, so profoundly kind, that I permitted even myself to be deceived by it. I dared now to entertain some hope.

During the first few days my mother could not tear herself away from her dear visitors; one might have thought she wished to surfeit them with tenderness. I saw her two or three times under the influence of some indefinable emotion, I saw her caress Juliana's hair with her blessed hand, I heard her ask her:

"Is he as kind to you as ever?"

"Yes, poor Tullio!" replied the other voice.

"So it is not true..."

"What?"

"I was told that..."

"What were you told?"

"Nothing, nothing ... I thought that Tullio had caused you some unhappiness."

They spoke in the embrasure of a window, behind waving curtains, while outside the wind sighed through the elm-trees. I came up to them before they were aware of my presence, and raising a portière, showed myself.

"Ah! Tullio!" cried my mother.

They exchanged a look, a little embarrassed.

"We were speaking of you," said my mother.

"Of me? Bad or good?" I asked lightly.

"Good," replied Juliana, quickly.

I detected in her voice the evident intention to reassure me.

The April sun shone on the window-sill, lit up my mother's gray hair, lightly touched Juliana's temples. The very white curtains were waving to and fro, reflected in the luminous window-panes. The lofty elms on the lawn, covered with young leaves, produced a murmur, at times loud, at times soft, on which the shadows, more or less stationary, regulated their swing. From the wall of the house, covered with thousands of bunches of violets, arose a paschal odor, like an invisible vapor of incense.

"How penetrating that odor is!" murmured Juliana, passing her hand over her brow and half-closing her eyes. "It makes one dizzy!"

I was between her and my mother, a little in the rear. A desire seized me to put my arms around both and lean out of the window. In that familiar and simple act I wished to put all the tenderness that swelled my heart, and make Juliana understand a multitude of inexpressible things and, by that one gesture, reconquer her entirely. But I was restrained by an almost infantile feeling of timidity.

"Look, Juliana," said my mother, pointing to the top of the hill, "look at your dear Lilacs. Can you see them?"

"Yes, yes."

And, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, she made an effort to see better. I, who was watching her, remarked a slight trembling of her lower lip.

"Can you see the cypress?" I asked her, with the intention of increasing her agitation by this suggestive question.

And I saw once more, in imagination, the venerable old cypress, whose trunk rose amid a rose-bush, and whose top sheltered a nest of nightingales.

"Yes, yes; I see it, but with difficulty."

The Lilacs stood out white against its background of foliage half-way up the slope. The chain of hills rolled away in the distance in a noble, peaceful, undulating line, and the olive-tree plantations on their sides appeared of extraordinary lightness, like a kind of greenish fog piled up in motionless shapes. The trees in blossom, dotted here and there with bouquets of red and white, broke the uniformity. The sky seemed to pale from minute to minute as if a stream of milk were being continually spread in and mixed with its fluid atmosphere.

"We will go to the Lilacs after Easter; everything there will be in flower," I said, trying to revive in that soul the dream which I had so brutally shattered.

I dared to draw closer to her, and put my arms around Juliana and my mother, and lean out of the window, advancing my head between theirs in such a manner that the hair of each brushed me. The spring, the purity of the air, the nobleness of the country, the peaceful transfiguration of every creature by the season's maternal influence, and that sky, that sky of divine paleness, more divine in measure as it became paler—all awoke in me such a new sentiment of life that I thought, with an internal tremor: "Can it be possible? Can it be possible? After all that has happened, after all that I have suffered, after so many transgressions, can I still find enjoyment in life? Can I, then, still hope? Can I still have a presentiment of happiness? From whence does this blessing come to me?" It seemed to me that all my being was relieved, became expanded, became dilated beyond its limits, with a subtle, rapid, and continuous vibration. Nothing can convey an idea of the feeling developed in me by the imperceptible sensation of a hair grazing my cheek.

We remained several minutes in this attitude, without speaking. The elms moaned. The constant thrill of the thousands of yellow and violet flowers that carpeted the wall beneath our window enchanted my eyes. A heavy and warm perfume arose in the sunshine with the rhythm of a breath.

All at once Juliana drew back, and grew pale. Her eyes looked troubled, her mouth was contracted as if with nausea. She said:

"That odor is terrible. It makes one giddy. Are you not affected by it too, mother?"

She turned round, tottered a few steps, and left the room hastily. My mother followed her.

I watched them as they passed through the corridors, still dominated by what rested of my former sensations, lost in the dream.

II.

My confidence in the future increased from day to day. It was as if I had forgotten everything. My soul, too fatigued, no longer remembered its sufferings. At certain periods of complete abandon, all became disintegrated, diluted, dissolved, lost in the original fluidity, became unrecognizable. Then, after these strange internal decompositions, it seemed to me that a new principle of life had entered into me, that a new power had penetrated me.

A multitude of sensations, involuntary, spontaneous, unconscious, and instinctive, made up my real existence. Between the exterior and the interior there was established a play of minute actions and instantaneous minute reactions, that vibrated in endless repercussions, and each one of these incalculable repercussions became converted into an astonishing psychic phenomenon. My entire being was modified by the slightest odor of the circumambient atmosphere, by a breath, by a shadow, by a flash of light.

The great maladies of the soul, like those of the body, renew a man, and the convalescences of the mind are not less charming nor less miraculous than the physical convalescences. Before a small, flowering shrub, before a branch covered with small buds, before a vigorous shoot growing out of an old and almost dead trunk, before the most modest metamorphoses accomplished by spring, I stopped, artless, ingenuous, stupefied.

Often, in the morning, I went out with my brother. At that hour, everything was cool, graceful, unconstrained.

Federico's company purified me and strengthened me not less than the good country air. Federico was then twenty-seven years old; he had almost always lived in the country, where he led a sober and laborious existence, and the earth seemed to have communicated to him its mild sincerity. He was in possession of the rule of life. Leon Tolstoï, as he kissed his fine, serene brow, would have called him, "My son."

We walked across the fields, without an object, exchanging but few words. He praised the fertility of our domains, explained to me the innovations introduced in their cultivation, pointing out the progress made. The cottages of our peasants were large and airy and coquettishly kept. Our stables were full of healthy and well-nourished cattle. Our dairies were admirably equipped. Often, on the way, he stopped to examine a plant, and his virile hands could touch with the greatest delicacy the little green leaves at the tip of a new shoot. At times we passed through an orchard. The peach-trees, apple-trees, pear-trees, cherry-trees, plum-trees, and apricot-trees bore on their branches thousands of flowers, and, below, the transparency of the rosy and silvery petals metamorphosed the light into a sort of humid atmosphere, into an indescribable thing, divinely graceful and hospitable. Through the small interstices of these light garlands smiled the blue sky.

While I was admiring the flowers, he was already anticipating the future treasure suspended from the branches, and said:

"You will see—you will see the fruit."

"Yes, I shall see it," I repeated to myself, inwardly. "I shall see the flowers fall, the leaves born, the fruit grow, color, ripen, and fall."

It was from my brother's mouth that this affirmation first issued, and it assumed for me a grave importance, as if it presaged I know not what promised and expected happiness, that was certain to arrive during the period of the vegetal labor, at the period separating the flower from the fruit. "Even before I manifested my intention to do so, it already seems natural to my brother that, henceforth, I should live here, in the country, with him and our mother; for he said I shall see the fruit of his trees. He is sure I shall see them. So it is quite true that a new life has begun again for me, and that my innate sensation does not deceive me. In fact, everything, now, is being accomplished with a strange, unusual facility, with an abundance of love. How I love Federico! Never have I loved him so much before." Such were the soliloquies that I indulged in, soliloquies somewhat disconnected, incoherent, at times puerile, because of the singular disposition of soul that made me recognize in no matter what insignificant fact a favorable sign, a happy prognostication.

My keenest joy was in knowing myself to be far removed from the past, far from certain places and certain persons, freed forever. Sometimes, in order to better enjoy the peace of this vernal country, I imagined to myself the space that separated me now from the shadowy world in which I had suffered so many and such culpable sufferings. Sometimes, too, a confused fear seized me again, compelled me to restlessly seek about me the motives of my present security, forced me to place my arm on my brother's arm, and read in his eyes the indubitable and protecting affection.

I had a blind confidence in Federico. I should have liked not only that he should love me, but that he should dominate me. I should have liked to cede to him my right as the elder, because he was more worthy, to submit to his advice, to have him for a guide, to obey him. At his side, I should not have run the peril of being lost, since he knew the right way and trod it with an infallible step. And, more than that, he was strong of arm, he would have defended me. He was the exemplary man—good, energetic, sagacious. To me, nothing equalled in nobleness the sight of his youth devoted to the religion of "to act conscientiously," consecrated to the love of the Earth. One would say that his eyes, in the continual contemplation of verdant nature, had borrowed something of its limpid vegetal color.

"Jesus of the soil," I called him one day, smiling. That was on a morning pregnant with innocence, one of those mornings that evoked the images of primordial daybreaks at the infancy of the world. My brother was speaking to a group of laborers at the edge of a field. He spoke standing, taller by a head than those around him, and his calm gesture indicated the simplicity of his words. Old men grown white in wisdom, mature men already on the confines of old age, were listening to the young man. All bore on their knotty bodies the mark of the great common toil. As there were no trees in the vicinity, and as the wheat was low in the furrows, their attitudes were fully outlined in the sanctity of the light. When he saw that I was coming towards him, he dismissed his men in order to come forward to meet me. And then fell spontaneously from my lips this salutation:

"Jesus of the soil, hosanna!"

To every vegetable growth he paid infinite attentions. Nothing escaped his penetrating and, so to speak, omnispective regard. During our matinal walks, he stopped at every step to remove from some leaf a snail, a caterpillar, or an ant. One day, while carelessly walking along, I struck the plants with the end of my stick, and at every blow the ends of the verdant stems flew in all directions. That gave him pain, since he took the stick from my hands, but with a gentle movement, and he blushed, thinking perhaps that his pity might seem to me an exaggeration of sickly sentimentality. Oh! that blush on that manly face.

Another day, as I was breaking off a flowering branch from an apple-tree, I surprised in Federico's eyes a shadow of sorrow. I stopped immediately, and withdrew my hands, saying:

"Does it displease you..."

He burst into a laugh.

"Not at all, not at all. You may despoil the entire tree."

Yet the broken branch, held by several live fibres, hung down the trunk, and, truly, that wound, moist with sap, had an appearance of a thing in pain; those fragile flowers, flesh-colored with pale spots, like bunches of simple roses, grown from a germ henceforth condemned, continued to thrill in the breeze.

Then, so as to excuse the cruelty of my aggression, I said:

"It is for Juliana."

And, breaking the last live fibres, I detached the broken branch.

III.

I carried this branch to Juliana, and many others besides. I never returned to the Badiola without a load of flowered gifts.

One morning, as I was carrying a bunch of hawthorns, I met my mother in the vestibule; I was somewhat out of breath, heated, disturbed by a slight intoxication.

"Where is Juliana?" I asked.

"Upstairs, in her room," she answered, laughing.

I ran up the staircase, crossed the corridor, entered the room, crying:

"Juliana, Juliana, where are you?"

Maria and Natalia ran to meet me, giving me a boisterous welcome, delighted at the sight of the flowers, dancing about as if possessed.

"Come in! Come in!" they cried. "Mamma is here, in the bedroom. Come in!"

On crossing the threshold my heart beat faster. Juliana was there, smiling and embarrassed. I threw the bunch at her feet.

"Look!"

"Oh! how beautiful!" she exclaimed, bending over the fragrant treasure.

She was dressed in one of her favorite gowns, hanging in ample and graceful folds, and of a green hue resembling the green of an aloes-leaf. Her hair, not yet dressed, covered the nape of her neck, hiding her ears beneath its thick masses. The emanations from the hawthorns, that odor of thyme mixed with bitter almonds, enveloped, inundated the room, penetrating everything.

"Take care not to prick yourself," I said to her. "See my hands."

I showed her the still bleeding lacerations, as if to enhance the value of my offering. "Oh! if now she would take my hands!" I thought. And in my mind passed confusedly the recollection of a day, far distant, when she had kissed my hands, lacerated by the thorns, when she had wanted to suck the drops of blood that appeared one after the other. "If now she would take my hands, and if, by this single action, she would accord me full pardon, and yield herself up to me entirely!"

At that time I was in constant expectation of some such movement. I could not, of course, have said what gave me such confidence; but I was sure that Juliana would give herself to me again in this manner sooner or later, by some simple and silent action by which she would "accord me full pardon and yield herself up to me entirely."

She smiled. A shade of suffering passed over her pale face and in her sunken eyes.

"Don't you feel a little better since you are here?" I asked, approaching her.

"Yes, I'm better," she answered.

Then, after a pause:

"And you?"

"Oh, I! I am cured. Don't you see?"

"Yes, it is true."

At that time, when she spoke to me, her words had a curious hesitation that seemed to me full of grace, but which now it is impossible for me to define. One would have said that she was continually preoccupied in restraining the word that rose to her lips, to pronounce another word. Moreover, her voice was, so to speak, more feminine; it had lost its former firmness, and some of its sonorousness; it was veiled, like an instrument played in secret.

But, since it had only tender accents for me now, what obstacle prevented us from being all in all to each other again? What obstacle maintained the separation between us?

During that period, which in the history of my soul will ever remain mysterious, my natural perspicacity seemed to have deserted me. All my terrible analytical faculties, even those that had made me suffer so much, seemed exhausted; the power of these restless faculties appeared to be annihilated. Innumerable sensations, innumerable feelings relative to that epoch, are now incomprehensible, inexplicable, because I have no indication to aid me in retracing their origin, in determining their character. There was a break in the continuity, or lack of solder between that period of my psychic existence and the other periods.

Formerly, I had narrated a fabulous tale in which a young prince, after the adventures of a long pilgrimage, finally succeeds in rejoining the lady whom he had pursued with his ardent love. The young man trembled with hope, and the lady smiled on him, close by. But a veil seemed to render this smiling lady intangible, a veil of unknown substance, so subtle that it was confounded with the air; and, nevertheless, this veil was a barrier that prohibited the young man from clasping the woman he loved to his heart.

This fable helps me a little to form an idea of the singular state in which I found myself at that time vis-à-vis Juliana. I felt that between her and me an unknown something constantly maintained an abyss. But, at the same time, I was confident that, sooner or later, the "simple and silent gesture" would annihilate the obstacle and bring back my happiness.

Meanwhile, how Juliana's room pleased me! It was furnished with light-colored hangings, with faded pink flowers and it had a deep alcove. What a perfume the hawthorns shed!

"This odor is penetrating," she said, very pale. "It gives one a headache. Don't you feel it?"

She went and opened a window.

Then she added:

"Maria, call Miss Edith."

The governess came in.

"Edith, please take these flowers to the music-room; put them into vases. Take care not to prick yourself."

Maria and Natalia wanted to carry a part of the bunch. We remained alone. She went once more to the window, and leaned against it, her back turned toward the light.

"Have you anything to do? Do you wish me to go?" I asked.

"No, no; stay, be seated. Tell me about your walk this morning. How far did you go?"

She spoke with some precipitation. As the window support was at about the height of her waist, she had placed her elbows on it, and her bust was inclined backward, framed by the rectangle of the window. Her face, turned directly toward me, was entirely shaded, particularly about the orbits of the eyes; but her hair, on the summit of which fell the light, formed a slight aureole; the light also touched the tops of her shoulders. One of her feet—the one that supported the weight of her body—was raised, drawing up the dress, partly disclosing the ash-colored stocking and the patent-leather slipper. In that attitude, in that light, her entire person possessed extraordinarily seductive power. A section of bluish and voluptuous landscape, pinked out between the two window-posts, formed a distant background behind her head.

And then, instantaneously, as if by a crushing revelation, I saw once more in her the desirable woman; and all my blood fired up at the memory of, and the desire of, her caresses.

I spoke to her, my eyes fixed on her. And the more I gazed on her, the more disturbed I became. She also, no doubt, must have read my look, since her uneasiness became visible. I thought, with poignant internal anxiety: "If I only dared? If I went closer to her? If I took her in my arms?" The apparent assurance that I sought to put in my frivolous remarks rapidly abandoned me. My disturbance grew. My embarrassment became insupportable. From the adjoining rooms came the sound of the voices of Maria, Natalia, and Edith, indistinctly.

I arose, approached the window, and stood beside Juliana. I was on the point of bending toward her to speak at last the words that I had so many times repeated to myself in imaginary conversations. But the fear of a probable interruption stopped me. I thought that perhaps the moment was badly chosen, that perhaps I should not have the time to say all to her, to open all my heart to her, to relate my intimate life during the last few weeks, the mysterious convalescence of my soul, the awakening of my most tender fibres, the arousing of my most delicate dreams, the depth of my new sensation, the tenacity of my hope. I thought that I should not have the time to recount in detail the recent episodes, to make those little, innocent confessions to her, so delicious to the ear of the woman who loves, fresh with sincerity, more persuasive than any eloquence. In fact, I must succeed in convincing her of a great truth, perhaps incredible to her after so many disillusions; succeed in convincing her that now my return was no longer deceptive, but sincere, definite, necessitated by a vital desire of my entire being. Of course, she was still distrustful; of course, her distrust was the cause of her reserve. Between us the shadow of an atrocious recollection ever interposed itself. It was for me to banish this shadow, to draw my soul and hers so closely together that nothing more could interpose between them. But, for that, a favorable occasion was required in some secret and silent place, inhabited only by memories. That place was the Lilacs.

We remained in the embrasure of the window, by each other's side, both silent. From the adjoining rooms came the sound of the voices of Maria, Natalia, and Edith, indistinctly. The perfume of the hawthorn was dissipated. The curtains that hung from the arch of the alcove permitted a view of the bed in its depth, and my eyes wandered ceaselessly toward it, searching the shadows, almost concupiscent.

Juliana had lowered her head, perhaps because she also felt the delicious and agonizing weight of the silence. The light breeze toyed with a loose curl on her temple. The restless agitation of that dark curl, in which were light scattered threads of gold, on that temple white as a wafer, made me languorous. And, as I gazed at her, I saw again on her neck the little brown mole which, in former days, had so often curiously attracted me.

Then, incapable of containing myself, with a mixture of apprehension and hardihood, I raised my hand to arrange the curl; and my fingers trembled on her hair, and they brushed against the ear, the neck, but lightly, very lightly, with the most furtive of caresses.

"What are you doing?" said Juliana, shaken by a start, turning on me a bewildered look, trembling perhaps more than I.

She left the window. Then, feeling that I was following her, she made several steps as if to flee, dismayed.

"Ah! Juliana, why, why?" I cried, stopping short.

Then immediately I added:

"It is true. I am still unworthy. Pardon!"

At that moment the two bells of the chapel began to chime. And Maria and Natalia rushed into the room, ran up to their mother with cries of joy, and hung around her neck, one after the other, covering her face with kisses; then, leaving their mother, they came to me, and I raised them in my arms, one after the other.

The two bells chimed furiously; the whole of the Badiola seemed to be invaded by the thrill of the bronze. It was Holy Saturday, the hour of the Resurrection.

IV.

In the afternoon of that same Saturday, I had a strange attack of melancholy.

The post had arrived at the Badiola, and I happened to be in the billiard-room with my brother, glancing through the newspapers. My eyes fell by chance on the name of Filippo Arborio, mentioned in an article. A sudden agitation seized me. Thus it is that a slight jar will stir up the dregs of a quiescent liquid.

I remember. It was a foggy afternoon, illuminated by the fatigued reverberation of a whitish light. Outside, before the window looking on the lawn, Juliana passed with my mother, arm in arm, chatting. Juliana carried a book, and walked as if fatigued.

With the incoherence of the images that unrolled before me in thought, there arose in my mind certain remnants of my past life: Juliana before the mirror, on that November day; the bouquet of white chrysanthemums; my anxiety on hearing the air from Orpheus; the words written on the fly-leaf of The Secret; the color of Juliana's dress; my soliloquy at the window; Filippo Arborio's face, dripping with perspiration; the scene in the dressing-room of the salle d'armes. I thought with a shudder of fear, like a man who suddenly finds himself leaning over the edge of a precipice: "Can it be possible that I am lost?"

Overcome by anguish, feeling a desire to be alone in order to commune with myself, to meet my fear face to face, I took leave of my brother, left the hall, and returned to my room.

My agitation was mingled with impatience and anger. I was like a man who, in the midst of the comfort of an illusory cure, in the full assurance of having regained his health, would feel all at once the sting of his old malady, would perceive that in his flesh the ineradicable disease still remained, and would be constrained to watch himself, to note his symptoms, in order to convince himself of the horrible truth. "Can it be possible that I am lost? And why?"

In the strange forgetfulness in which the entire past was buried, in that sort of obscurity which seemed to have entirely invaded one layer of my conscience, the doubt against Juliana, that odious doubt, had also vanished, was dissolved. My soul had so great a desire to lull itself with illusions, to believe and to hope! My mother's saintly hand, in caressing Juliana's hair, had rekindled for me the aureole around that head. By one of those sentimental errors frequent during the period of weakness, when I had seen the two women leading the same existence in such sweet concord, I had involved them in the same irradiation of purity.

But now, a slight accidental fact, a mere name read by chance in a journal, the awakening of a recollection had sufficed to upset me, to frighten me, to open an abyss beneath my feet; and I did not dare sound the depths of a resolute scrutiny, because my dream of happiness withheld me, drew me back, clung to me obstinately. I wavered at first in an obscure and indefinable anguish, traversed at moments by dreadful glimpses. "It may be that she is not pure, and then? Filippo Arborio, or another ... who knows? Were I certain of the sin, could I pardon it? What sin? What pardon? You have not the right to judge her; you have not the right to raise your voice. She has kept silent too often. Now, it is your duty to keep silent. And your happiness? The happiness that you dream of, is it your own or does it belong to both of you? To both of you, of course; for the shadow of her sorrow would suffice to obscure all your joys. You suppose that, if you are happy, she will be happy also—you with your past of constant misconduct, she with her past of constant martyrdom? The happiness that you dream of has for its only foundation the abolition of the past. Why, then, if she had truly ceased to be pure, would it be impossible to throw a veil over it or condone her sin as you would your own? Why, if she forgets, should you not forget, yourself? Why, if you claim to be a man without prejudice and completely freed from social convention, should you not consider her also as a woman in the same state of being? Such an inequality would be perhaps the worst of your injustices. But the Ideal? But the Ideal? My own felicity would not be possible except on the condition of recognizing in Juliana a creature absolutely superior, impeccable, worthy of every adoration; and it is precisely also in the innate feeling of this superiority, in the consciousness of her personal moral greatness, that she would find the most precious elements of her own felicity. I should not succeed in forgetting my own past or hers, because the existence of this special happiness presupposes both the profligacy of my former life and her unconquered and almost superhuman heroism, the image of which has always constrained my mind to bow before it. But do you take into account the amount of egotism and high ideality that enters into your dream? Do you believe you merit that supreme prize, happiness? By what privilege? So your long misconduct has entitled you, not to expiation, but to a reward?"

I rose hastily to my feet to cut short this debate. "In brief, it concerns only an old suspicion, very vague, and awakened by chance. This unreasonable agitation will go away. I have made a substance of a shadow. In two or three days, after Easter, we will go to the Lilacs, and then I shall know, I shall unquestionably feel the truth. But is not that profound and immutable melancholy which is in her eyes also suspicious? That bewildered air, that species of continual preoccupation which is marked so heavily on her brow, that great fatigue which is revealed by certain attitudes, that anguish which she cannot succeed in dissimulating at your approach—is not all that suspicious?" The ambiguity of such symptoms bore also a favorable interpretation. Then, submerged by a flood of the most violent pain, I went up to the window, with the instinctive desire of plunging into the spectacle of the outer world to discover there something that would correspond to the state of my soul—a revelation or an appeasement.

The sky was quite white, like a scaffolding of superimposed veils between which the air circulated, producing large mobile folds. One of these veils seemed at times to detach itself and approach the earth, graze the tops of the trees, break up, be reduced to falling fragments, undulate on the ground, fade away. On the horizon, the lines of the heights were confusedly unrolled, disappearing to reappear in the fantastic landscapes, like a vista perceived in a dream, without reality. A lead-colored shadow covered the valley, and the Assoro, whose shores were invisible, animated it with its reflections. This tortuous river, glistening in that sombre gulf, beneath that slow and continued disaggregation of the sky, attracted the attention, and had for the mind the fascination of symbolical things, seemed to bear in itself the occult sense of that indefinable spectacle.

My pain gradually lost its acuteness, became appeased and calm. "Why do you aspire with such avidity to a happiness of which you are not worthy? Why do you base the whole edifice of your future life on an illusion? Why believe with such blind faith in a privilege that does not exist? All men perhaps, in the course of their lives, encounter a decisive period in which the most perspicacious are able to understand what their life should be. That period you have already met. Remember the moment when the white and faithful hand which offered you love, indulgence, peace, dreams, forgetfulness, everything that is good and beautiful, trembled in the air, was extended toward you as if for the supreme offering..."

Bitterness swelled my heart with tears. I leaned my elbows on the balustrade, my hands to my face, and, my eyes fixed on the windings of the river at the bottom of the leaden valley, while the scaffolding of the sky ceaselessly disaggregated, I remained for several minutes under the menace of an imminent punishment, I felt that an unknown disaster was suspended above me.

But, suddenly, from the room below arose the sound of the piano; and instantaneously, that heavy oppression disappeared, and I was seized by a confused anxiety in which all the dreams, every desire, each hope, every regret, remorse, and terror were mingled anew with inconceivable and suffocating rapidity.

I recognized the music. It was a Romance without Words of which Juliana was very fond, and which Miss Edith often played; it was one of those veiled yet profound melodies in which the Soul appeared to ask Life, with ever-changing accents, this single question, "Why have you disappointed my expectation?"

Yielding to a kind of instinctive impulse, I went out, agitated, traversed the corridor, descended the staircase, and stopped before the door from which issued the sounds. The door was ajar; I slipped in without making any noise, and looked through the portières. Was it Juliana? At first my eyes, blinded by the light, were incapable of distinguishing anything, before adapting themselves to the darkness; but I was struck by the penetrating perfume of the hawthorns, that odor of mingled thyme and bitter-almond, fresh as country milk. I looked in. The room was poorly lighted by a greenish light that struggled in from between the slats of the Venetian blinds. Miss Edith was alone at the piano, and she continued to play without noticing my presence. The polished case of the instrument glistened in the dark; the branches of hawthorns made a white spot. In the quiet of this retreat, in this perfume emanating from the branches that recalled the happy matinal intoxication, and Juliana's smile and my own fear, the romance seemed more desolate than ever.

Where was Juliana? Gone upstairs? Still out of doors? I withdrew; I went down the other stairs; I traversed the vestibule without meeting anyone. I had an unconquerable desire to seek her, to see her; I thought that, perhaps, it would suffice me to be near her in order to recover my calmness, to regain confidence. On going out on the lawn, I perceived her beneath the elms, sitting with Federico.

Both smiled at me. When I came up to them my brother said smilingly:

"We were speaking of you. Juliana thinks you will soon be tired of the Badiola.... If so, what will become of our projects?"

"No, Juliana does not know," I replied, making an effort to recover my habitual ease. "But you will see. On the contrary, it is of Rome that I am tired ... and of everything else."

I looked at Juliana. A marvellous change was taking place in my soul. The sad things that, up to then, had oppressed me, now faded away, disappeared, gave place to a salutary feeling that the mere sight of her and of my brother sufficed to awaken in me. She was seated in a careless and nonchalant attitude, holding on her knees a book that I recognized, the book that I had given her some days before, Tolstoï's Peace and War. Truly, all about her, her attitude, her look, breathed sweetness and goodness. And in me an emotion was born similar to that which I should doubtless have felt if, in the same place, beneath the familiar elms, that shed their dead flowers, I had seen Constance, the poor sister, side by side with Federico.

The elms rained thousands of flowers at every breath of the wind. There was, in the white light, a continual and very slow rain of diaphanous, almost impalpable pellicles, that loitered in the air, hesitating, trembling like the wings of dragon-flies, of an indefinable color between green and blond, and whose incessant fall imparted a sensation of vertigo. They fell on Juliana's knees, on her shoulders; from time to time she made a movement to remove one that had ensconced itself in her hair.

"Ah! If Tullio stays at the Badiola," said Federico, addressing her, "we will do great things. We will promulgate the new agrarian laws; we will establish the foundations of the new agricultural constitution... You smile? You also will have your share in our work; we will confide to you the execution of two or three precepts of our Decalogue. You will work like the others. Apropos, Tullio, when shall we commence this novitiate? Your hands are too white. Eh! It is not enough to simply prick them with thorns...."

He spoke gayly, in his clear and strong voice, that immediately inspired every listener with a feeling of security and confidence. He spoke of his old and new projects relative to the interpretation of the primitive Christian law on alimentary labor with a gravity of thought and emotion that tempered that sportive gayety with which he protected himself as with a veil of modesty against the admiration and eulogy of his auditors. In him all appeared simple, easy, spontaneous. This young man, by the sole power of a mind that illumined his inborn virtue, had had, for several years already, the intuition of the social theory that the Moujik Bondareff inspired in Leo Tolstoï. At that time, he had not the least knowledge of Peace and War, the great book that had just appeared in the East.

"Here is a book for you," I said to him, taking the volume from Juliana's knees.

"Thanks; lend it to me. I will read it."

"Do you like it?" I asked Juliana.

"Yes; very much. It is sad and consoling at the same time. I already love Marie Bolkonsky, and Pierre Besoukhow too."

I sat down near her, on a bench. It seemed to me that I was thinking of nothing, that I had not one precise thought; but my soul kept vigil and meditated. There was a manifest contrast between the feeling that sprang from the circumstance, from the neighboring objects, and that which corresponded with Federico's words, with that book, with the names of the characters whom Juliana loved.

The time passed slowly and gently, almost lazily, in this diffused and whitish mist in which the elms gradually shed their flowers. The sound of the piano reached us, muffled, unintelligible, rendering the light more melancholy, cradling, so to speak, the drowsy atmosphere.

Absorbed, listening no longer, I opened the book, I turned the leaves at several places, and ran through the beginning of several pages. I noticed that there were several pages turned down at the corners, as if to mark them; on others, there were finger-nail marks, the habit of the reader. Then I wished to read in turn, curious, almost anxious. In the scene between Pierre Besoukhow and the unknown old man at the Torjok post-house, many passages were marked.

"Let your spiritual look fall back on your inner being. Ask yourself if you are satisfied with yourself. At what result have you arrived, having but your intelligence for a guide? You are young, you are rich, you are intelligent. What have you done with all these gifts? Are you satisfied with yourself and with your life?"

"No, I have a horror of it!"

"If you have a horror of it, change it, purify yourself. And, in measure as you transform yourself, you will learn to recognize wisdom. How have you passed your existence? In orgies, in debauches, in depravities, receiving everything from society without giving it anything. What use have you made of the benefits of fortune? What have you done for your fellow-man? Have you thought of your tens of thousands of serfs? Have you assisted them morally or materially? No, you have not. You have profited by their labor in order to live a life of corruption. Have you sought to employ yourself in the service of your fellow-man? No. You have lived in indolence. And then you married; you accepted the responsibility of serving as a guide to a young woman. And then? Instead of helping her to find the path of truth, you have plunged her into the abyss of deceit and of misery...."

Again the unbearable load weighed me down, crushed me; and it was a more atrocious torture than that I had already suffered, because Juliana's presence exasperated the crisis. On the leaf, the passage transcribed was marked by a single pencil stroke. Without any doubt, Juliana had marked it, thinking of me, of my misconduct. But the last line? To whom did that refer? To me? To us?

Had I thrown her, had she fallen "into the abyss of deceit and misery"?

I feared that she and Federico would hear the beating of my heart.

There was another page turned down, with a very pronounced mark—that on the death of the Princess Lisa.

"The eyes of the dead woman were closed; but her small face had not changed, and she seemed constantly saying: 'What have you done to me?' Prince André did not weep; but he felt his heart break as he thought that he was guilty of wrongs henceforth irreparable and unforgettable. The old prince came also, and kissed one of the frail waxen hands that lay crossed over one another. And one would have thought that the poor, small face was again repeating to him: 'What have you done to me?'"

That gentle yet terrible question pierced me like a dagger. "What have you done to me?" I kept my eyes fixed on the page, not daring to make a movement, to look at Juliana, yet agonized by a desire to do so; and I feared that both she and Federico might hear my heart-beats, that they might turn toward me to look at me and that they would discover my agitation. My agitation was so great that it seemed to me that my face was distorted, that I was incapable of rising, incapable of uttering a single syllable. I threw a single rapid, stealthy glance at Juliana, and her profile impressed itself on me so strongly that I seemed to continue to see her before me on the page, beside the "poor, small face" of the dead princess. It was a pensive profile, rendered graver by attention, shaded by long lashes; and the lips, tightly closed, somewhat depressed at the corners, appeared as if involuntarily confessing a feeling of fatigue and great sadness. She was listening to my brother. And my brother's voice resounded confusedly in my ears, seemed to me far off, although he was quite close. And all these flowers shed by the elms, that rained, rained ceaselessly, all these dead flowers, almost unreal, almost bereft of being, induced in me an inexpressible sensation, as if that psychic vision were transformed in me into strange internal phenomena, as if I had been present at the continuous passage of these thousands of impalpable shadows in an inner sky, at the bottom of my soul. "What have you done to me?" repeated the voice of the dead and the living, both the one and the other without moving their lips. "What have you done to me?"

"What are you reading, Tullio?" asked Juliana, turning and taking from my hands the book, which she closed and replaced on her knees with a sort of nervous impatience.

And immediately, without pause, as if to remove all significance from her action, she added:

"Why do we not rejoin Miss Edith and have a little music? Do you hear her? She is playing, I think, the Funeral March for the Death of a Hero, which you are so fond of, Federico...."

She listened. We all three listened. We heard several chords in the silence. She was not mistaken. Rising, she added:

"Well, come. Will you?"

I rose last, so to have her before me. She did not take the trouble to shake from her dress the elm flowers that had formed a soft carpet on the ground all around.

She stood still a minute, her head bent, regarding the layer of flowers which she hollowed out and piled up with the slender tip of her shoe, while on her, other flowers, and still other flowers, continued to rain, to rain ceaselessly. I could see nothing of her face. Was she really so attentive to that trifling action? Or was she not rather absorbed in perplexity?

V.

The following morning, among those who brought Easter offerings to the Badiola, came Calisto, old Calisto, the keeper at the Lilacs, with an enormous bouquet of fresh and odorous lilacs. He wanted to offer them to Juliana with his own hands, recalling to her the happy time of our stay there, and begging for another visit, a short visit. "Signora had seemed so gay, so happy over there. Why did she not return? The house had remained intact; nothing had been changed. The garden was now more filled. The lilac-trees, a veritable forest, were in full bloom. Did not their perfume reach as far as the Badiola, toward evening? Really, the garden and the house expected a visit. Beneath the roof all the old nests were full of swallows. In deference to Signora's wish, these nests had been respected as if sacred. But, assuredly, there were too many now. Every week they were obliged to clean up the balconies and window-sills with a shovel. And what a warbling, from morning till night! When will Signora decide to come? Soon?"

"Shall we go there on Tuesday?" I asked Juliana.

After a slight hesitation, sustaining with the greatest difficulty the heavy care that bowed her head, she answered:

"We'll go on Tuesday, if you wish."

"Very well. Tuesday, then, Calisto," I said to the old man, in such a happy tone that I was surprised at it myself so sudden and spontaneous had been the rapture of my soul. "Expect us Tuesday morning. We will bring our lunch. Make no preparations. Do you understand? Let the house remain closed. I wish to open the door myself, and to open the windows myself, one after the other. Do you understand?"

A strange happiness, without a single cloud, agitated me, urged me on to puerile actions and puerile and almost foolish remarks, that I could hardly restrain. I should have liked to embrace Calisto, to stroke his fine, white beard, take him in my arms, speak to him of the Lilacs, of the past, of the "good old time," in a prolixity of words, under the grand Easter sun.

"Once more I see before me a simple, sincere man, a faithful heart," I thought, regarding him. And once more I felt security, as if the affection of this old man were for me a second talisman against the blows of fate.

Once more, since the close of the preceding evening, my soul expanded, stimulated by the abundance of joy that impregnated the atmosphere, that emanated from every being. That morning, one would have thought that the Badiola was the shrine of a pilgrimage. Not one peasant failed to bring his offering and well-wishes. My mother received upon her blessed hands a thousand kisses of men, women, and children. At the mass that was celebrated in the chapel a dense crowd was present. It overflowed the porch and spread over the lawn, full of religious zeal beneath the azure vault. The silver bells rang merrily in the still air with joyous, almost melodic harmony. On the tower, the inscription on the sundial said: Hora est benefaciendi. And on this glorious morning, on which one felt, so to speak, all the gratitude due to long kindness mounting toward the sweet maternal house, these three words seemed like a chant.

How then could I retain my perfidious doubt, suspicions, troubled recollections? What could I have to fear after having seen my mother press her lips on Juliana's smiling brow, after having seen my brother press in his noble and loyal hand the delicate and pale hand of her who was for him a second incarnation of Constance.

VI.

The thought of the excursion to the Lilacs occupied me all that day and again the day following, without interruption. Never, I think, had the longing for the hour agreed upon for a first rendezvous filled me with such ardent impatience.

The disturbance of the senses contributed also to enshroud and dull my conscience. I wanted to reconquer Juliana body and soul. The name of the Lilacs reawakened in me memories, recollections, not only of a sweet idyll, but also of ardent passion. Without being aware of it, I had perhaps sharpened my longing by the inevitable images that suspicion engenders; it was a latent poison that I bore in me. Up to then, in fact, it had seemed to me that my dominant emotion was entirely spiritual, and, in the expectation of the great day, I had taken delight in imagining the conversation that I would hold with the woman whose pardon I wished to obtain. Now, on the contrary, what I saw, was less the pathetic scene that would take place between us than the scene that must be the immediate consequence. Gradually, by a rapid and irresistible elimination, a single image excluded all the others, invaded me, mastered me, became fixed, clear, precise in the smallest particulars. "It is after lunch. A small glass of Chablis has sufficed to disturb Juliana, who does not drink wine, so to speak. The afternoon becomes warmer and warmer; the odor of the roses, of the corn-flag, of the lilacs, become violent; the swallows pass and repass with a deafening twittering. We are alone, both invaded by an unbearable internal tremor. And, suddenly, I say to her: 'Shall we go and look at our old room?' It is the old nuptial chamber, that intentionally I had omitted to open during our first walk through the villa. We enter. There is a low humming noticeable, the same humming that one thinks one hears in the deep folds of certain shells; but it is only the murmur of my arteries. She also, no doubt, hears this humming; but it is only the murmur of her arteries. All around is silent; one would think that the swallows have ceased warbling. I want to speak, and, at my first word, that sticks in my throat, she falls into my arms, almost fainting."

This imaginary picture became ceaselessly more and more embellished, grew complicated, simulated the reality, attained an incredible actuality. I could not succeed in preventing its absolute empire over my mind. One would have said that there was reborn in me the old-time libertine, so keen was my pleasure in contemplating and caressing the vision. The kind of life I had led for several weeks, in this warm springtime, produced its effect on my regenerated organism. Simple physiological phenomena completely modified the state of my conscience, gave an entirely different turn to my thoughts, made of me another man.

Maria and Natalia had expressed a desire to accompany us on this excursion. Juliana wanted them to come, but I objected, and I used all my skill, every persuasion, to accomplish my purpose.

Federico had made this proposition: "I must go to Casal Caldore on Tuesday. I will accompany you in the carriage as far as the Lilacs, where you will stop, and I will continue on my way. Then, in the evening, I will call for you again with the carriage, and we will return together to the Badiola." Juliana consented, in my presence.

I reflected that Federico's company, at least in going, would not inconvenience us; on the contrary, it would even spare me a certain embarrassment. In fact, what could we have spoken about, Juliana and I, had we been alone during the two or three hours the ride lasted? What attitude could I have taken toward her? Who knows even if I should not have spoiled the situation, compromised its success, or, at least, removed the freshness from our emotion? Was it not my dream to find myself again suddenly with her at the Lilacs, as if by magic, and there to speak to her my first word of tenderness and submission? The presence of Federico furnished the advantage of avoiding uncertain preliminaries, long and painful silences, sentences spoken in low tones on account of the coachman's ears; in a word, all the little irritations and tortures. We would get down at the Lilacs, and then, then only, we should find ourselves by each other's side at the gate of the lost paradise.

VII.

This is what took place. I cannot find words to describe the sensation I felt when I heard the sound of the bells and the noise of the carriage which bore Federico away in the direction of Casal Caldore. I said to Calisto, as I took the keys from his hands with manifest impatience:

"Now, you may go. I will call you later."

And I myself closed the gate behind the old man, who seemed rather surprised and dissatisfied at so unceremonious a dismissal.

"At last, we're here!" I cried, directly I was alone with Juliana. And the entire wave of happiness that had invaded me passed into my voice.

I was happy, happy, unspeakably happy; I was as if fascinated by an immense hallucination of unexpected, unhoped for happiness, that transfigured all my being, reawoke and multiplied all that there was still good and youthful in me, isolated me from the world, instantly concentrated my life within the circuit of the walls enclosed by that garden. Words sprang to my lips without connection, inexpressible; my reason wandered in a blazing flash of thoughts.

How was it that Juliana had not guessed what was passing in me? How was it she had not understood me? How was it that her heart had not received the counter-shock of my impetuous joy?

We looked at each other. I can still see the anxious expression of her face, over which hovered an indefinable smile. She spoke in that muffled, feeble voice, always hesitating with the singular hesitation that I had already remarked in other circumstances and that made her appear to be ceaselessly preoccupied in restraining the words that mounted to her lips in order to substitute for them other words. She said:

"Let us take a walk round the garden before opening the house. How long it is since I have seen it in such flower. The last time we were here was three years ago, do you remember? It was also in April, during Easter week."

Without doubt she wished to overcome her agitation, but she could not succeed; without doubt she wished to repress the effusion of her tenderness, but she could not. In this place, the first words issued from her own mouth had begun to evoke memories. After a few steps she stopped, and we looked at each other. An indefinable change, as if she were forcing herself to stifle something, passed through her dark eyes.

"Juliana!" I cried, incapable of controlling myself, feeling an afflux of passionate and tender words spring from the bottom of my heart, seized by a mad frenzy to kneel before her on the sand, to embrace her knees, to kiss her dress, her hands, her wrists, furiously, ceaselessly.

With a supplicating gesture, she made a motion for me to be quiet. And she continued to advance along the path, hastening her steps.

She wore a light-gray dress trimmed with darker shades, a gray felt hat, and carried a gray-silk parasol embroidered with white trefoils. I still see her walking between the tufted masses of lilacs that bent toward her their thousands of bluish-violet bunches.

It was hardly eleven o'clock. The morning was warm, a precocious warmth; in the azure floated a number of flocculent vapors. The charming bushes that had given their name to this country-house blossomed on every side, were masters of the garden, formed a wood, interspersed here and there by tea-rose bushes and by the tufts of the corn-flag. Here and there the roses climbed up stalks, insinuated themselves between the branches, fell back again in chains, in garlands, festoons, bouquets; at the foot of the stalks, Florentine orris sprang from between their leaves, like long, greenish swords, flowers of large and noble design. The three perfumes harmonized in a deep accord that I recognized, because, since the now distant epoch, these had remained in my memory as clearly as the accord of three musical notes. In the silence only the warbling of the swallows could be heard. The house could scarcely be seen between the cones of the cypresses, and the swallows were as numerous there as bees around a hive.

Very soon Juliana slowed down her pace. I walked at her side, so near that at times our elbows touched. She glanced attentively around her, as if she feared something might escape her. Two or three times I detected on her lips a movement as if she were about to speak: it was like the first outline of a word that remained unpronounced.

I said to her, in a low voice and timidly:

"Of what are you thinking?"

"I am thinking that we should never have left here."

"You are right, Juliana."

At times the swallows almost brushed against us, with a cry, rapid and glistening like winged arrows.

"How much I have longed for this day, Juliana! Ah! you will never know how much I have longed for it!" I cried, prey to an emotion so strong that my voice became almost unrecognizable. "Never, do you understand, never have I felt an anxiety equal to that which devours me since the day before yesterday, since the moment you consented to come here. Do you remember the day when, for the first time, we saw each other in secret, on the terrace of the Villa Oggeri, where we kissed each other? I was mad with love for you, do you remember? Well, the expectation of the last night was nothing in comparison. You do not believe me, and you are right in misbelieving me, in doubting me. But I want to tell you all, to recount my sufferings, my fears, my hope. Oh! I know, my sufferings are doubtless little in comparison with those that I have made you suffer. I know, I know; all my pains are not equal to your pains, not worth your tears. I have not expiated my fault, and I am not worthy of pardon. But tell me, tell me that I may hope that you will pardon me. You do not believe me; but I wish to tell you all. It is you, you only whom I have truly loved; it is you alone whom I love. I know, I know; men will say these things in order to obtain pardon, and you are right not to believe me. Yet see; if you think of our love of long ago, if you think of our first three years of never-failing tenderness, if you remember, if you recollect, you will see it is impossible to refuse to believe me. Even in my lowest abasements, you were to be for me unforgettable; and my soul ever longed to turn toward you, to seek you, to regret you, always, do you understand? Always. Did you not perceive it yourself? When you were as a sister to me, did you not sometimes perceive that I was dying of sorrow? I swear to you that, far away from you, I never felt sincere joy. I have never had one hour of complete forgetfulness. Never, never; I swear it. You were my constant, profound, secret adoration. The better part of myself has always been yours, and there has been in me a hope that has never been extinguished—that of being able to free myself from my malady and to find intact my first, my only love... Ah! Juliana, tell me that I have not hoped in vain!"

She walked with extreme slowness, no longer looking before her, her head bent, excessively pale. A slight, painful contraction appeared at times at the corner of her mouth. And, because she remained silent, I began to feel a vague uneasiness arise within me. An oppressive feeling began to be caused by the sun, the flowers, the cries of the swallows, by all the joyfulness displayed by triumphant springtime.

"You do not answer me?" I continued, taking the hand that she let hang by her side. "You do not believe me; you have lost all confidence in me; you still fear that I deceive you; you do not dare to give yourself up again because you are always thinking of the last time.... Yes, it is true, that was the most brutal of all my infamies. I repent it as I would a crime, and, even if you should pardon me, I shall never be able to forgive myself. But did you not notice that I was ailing, that I was losing my reason? A curse pursued me, and, since that day, I have not had one minute's respite, I have not had a single lucid interval. Do you not remember? Do you not remember? Surely you knew I was beside myself, in a state of madness; for you looked at me as one does upon a madman. How often have I surprised in your glances sad compassion, curiosity, fear! Do you not remember what I had become? I was unrecognizable. Well, I am cured; I saved myself for your sake. I have succeeded in opening my eyes, I have succeeded in seeing the light. At last it is light. It is you, you only whom I have truly loved all my life, it is you only whom I love. Do you hear?"

I pronounced the last words in a firmer voice, and more slowly, as if to impress them one by one upon this woman's soul, and I pressed firmly her hand, which I already held in my own. She stopped with the manner of one about to collapse, gasping. Later, only later, during the hours that followed, I understood the excess of mortal anguish exhaled by this panting. But, at that moment, I understood only this: "The recollection of my horrible treason, evoked by me, revives her suffering. I have touched wounds that are still open. Ah! if I could persuade her to believe me! If I could conquer her distrust! Does not my voice convince her that I am speaking the truth?"

We had come to the intersection of two paths. There was a bench there. She murmured:

"Let us sit down a little."

We sat down. I do not know if she recognized the spot. Even I did not recognize it at first, bewildered like a man who has had both his eyes bandaged for some time. We both looked about us, then we looked at one another, and in our eyes we had the same thought. A crowd of tender recollections were connected with this old stone bench. My heart swelled, not with regret, but with a restless covetousness, with a sort of frenzy of living that, in a flash, gave me a chimerical, dazzling vision of the future. "Ah! she is ignorant of what new tenderness I am capable! In my soul there is a paradise for her." And the flaming up of that ideal of love was so strong that I became exalted.

"Are you sad? But what creature in all the world was ever loved as I love you? To what woman has it been given to obtain a proof of love equal to that I give you? You said just now: 'We should never have left here.' Without doubt, we should have been happy: you would not have suffered a martyrdom, you would not have shed so many tears, you would not have lost so many years of your life; but you would not have known my love, all my love."

Her head was bent on her bosom, her eyes half-closed, and she listened, motionless. Her eyelashes threw on the upper part of her cheeks a shadow that disturbed me more than a look would have done.

"And I myself would have had no knowledge of my love. Did I not believe the first time I left you that all was at an end? I sought another passion, another fever, another intoxication; I wished to embrace life in one single clasp. You did not suffice me. And during all those years I weakened myself by an atrocious life, oh! so atrocious that I have a horror of it, as a convict has a horror of the prison in which he has lived, dying a little every day. And I had to wander from darkness into darkness, before light fell on my soul, before this great truth appeared to me. I have loved only one woman, and you are she. You alone, in all the world, are good and gentle; and you are the best and most gentle creature I have ever dreamed of; you are the Unique. And you were in my house, while I sought you afar off. Do you understand, now? Do you understand? You were in my house, while I sought you afar off. Ah, tell me, is not this confession worth all your tears? Do you not wish you had shed more, much more, in order to purchase this certitude?"

"Yes, still more," she said, so low that I scarcely heard her.

The words passed like a breath from her pallid lips. And the tears gushed from between her eyelashes, rolled down her cheeks, wetted the convulsed mouth, fell on that palpitating bosom.

"Juliana, my love! Oh, my love!" I cried, with a thrill of supreme felicity, throwing myself on my knees before her.

And I threw my arms around her, I laid my head on her bosom, I felt again in all my being that frenetic tension in which ends useless effort to express by an action, by a gesture, by a caress, the inexpressible internal passion. Her tears fell on my cheek. If the material effect of these warm life-drops had equalled the sensations that I received from them, I should carry an indelible mark on my skin.

"Oh! let me drink," I begged.

Raising myself, I placed my lips to her eyelids and I bathed them with her tears, while my hands lavished on her distracted caresses. My limbs had acquired an extraordinary flexibility, a sort of illusory fluidity that prevented me from noticing the obstacle presented by the clothes. It seemed to me that I had the power to enclose and envelop the entire person of the loved one.

"Did you dream," I said, with the saline savor in my mouth that impregnated me to the heart (later, during the hours that followed, I was astonished at not having found an intolerable bitterness in these tears), "did you dream you would be loved so much? Did you dream of such happiness? It is I, look, it is I who speak to you like this; look well: it is I. If you knew how strange that seems to me! If I could tell you! I know that I do not know you from to-day, I know I do not love you from to-day, I know that you are what you have always been. And yet it seems to me that I only just found you a moment ago, when you said: 'Yes, still more.' You said it, did you not? Only three words—a breath. And I am reborn, and you are reborn, and we will be happy, happy forever."

I told her these things in a voice that seemed to come from a distance, broken, indefinable; in one of those tones whose intonations seem to rise to our lips, not from our material organs, but from the deepest depths of our soul. And she, who up to then had shed silent tears, burst into sobs.

Violent, too violent were her sobs; not as when one succumbs to a limitless joy, but when one gives vent to inconsolable despair. She sobbed so violently that, for several seconds, I was seized by the stupor caused by excessive manifestations, supreme paroxysms of human emotions. Unconsciously I drew back a little; but, immediately, I noticed the distance that now separated us; I at once noticed not only that there was no longer a physical contact, but also that the sensation of moral communion had become dissipated in the twinkling of an eye. We were still two beings, distinct, separate, external to one another. The very difference of our attitudes even accentuated this disunion. Sitting back at her end of the bench and covering her face with her two hands, she sobbed; and every one of her sobs shook her entire being, put in evidence her fragility, so to speak. Without touching her, I was again on my knees before her; and I looked at her, stupefied, and yet strangely lucid, attentive to all that was passing within me, and yet with every sense open to the perception of surrounding objects. I heard both her sobs and the twittering of the swallows; I had an exact notion of time and place. And those flowers, and those perfumes, and the surrounding glory of the joyous springtime inspired me with a fright that grew and grew, becoming a sort of panicky terror, an instinctive and blind terror against which reason was powerless. And, like a thunderbolt that lights up a bank of clouds, one thought flashed out from the midst of this tumultuous fear, illuminated me, struck me to the heart: "She is impure!"

Ah! why did I not fall then, struck dead by the blow? Why did not one of my vital organs collapse? Why did I not expire at the feet of the woman who, in a few short moments, had raised me to the height of happiness, only to precipitate me into an abyss of misery?

"Answer!"

I seized her wrists, I uncovered her face, I spoke close to her; and my voice was so low that I scarcely heard it myself in the tumult of my brain.

"Answer! What do these tears signify?"

She ceased to sob, and looked at me; and her eyes, reddened by the tears, became dilated with an expression of supreme anguish, as if they had seen me dying. In fact, my face must have seemed lifeless.

"It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?" I added, revealing my terrible thought by this obscure question.

"No, no, Tullio! No—it is—nothing. What could you have thought? No, no. I am so weak, you see. I am no longer what I was formerly. I have no strength. I am ill, you know; I am so ill! I have not had the force to resist your words. You understand. This crisis has come to me so unexpectedly. It is my nervousness—a sort of convulsion. When one has a spasm like this, one cannot distinguish whether it is from joy or sorrow. Oh! my God! See, it is passing. Rise, Tullio; come here, by my side."

She spoke to me in a voice still choked by tears, still broken with sobs; she looked at me with an expression that was well known to me, the expression that she had already often had at the sight of my suffering. At one time, she could not bear to see me suffer. Her sensibility to this was so exaggerated that I could obtain anything from her by showing her that I was sad. She would have done anything to free me from pain, even the slightest. Often at that time I feigned pain, in jest, to make her uneasy, so as to be consoled like a child, to obtain certain caresses that pleased me, to call forth certain graceful gestures that I adored. Was it not the same tender yet alarmed expression that reappeared now in her eyes?

"Come here, by my side; sit down. Or would you prefer to continue our walk in the garden? We have seen nothing yet. Let us go toward the fountain. I would like to bathe my eyes. Why do you look at me so? Of what are you thinking? Are we not happy? See, I begin to feel well again, very well. But I must bathe my eyes, my face. What time is it? Noon, perhaps? Federico will be back at about six o'clock. We have plenty of time. Will you come?"

She spoke in a broken and still somewhat convulsive voice, and with a manifest effort, as if trying to collect herself, to regain command of her nervousness, to dissipate in me the shadow of an apprehension, to appear to me confiding and happy. The smile that trembled in her still humid and somewhat reddened eyes had a troubled gentleness that awakened my sympathy. I felt in her words, in her attitude, in all her person that gentleness that softened me, that made me languish with a half-sensual languor, is impossible for me to define the delicate seduction that, emanating from this creature, insinuated itself in my senses and in my mind, favored by the indefinable and confused state of my soul. She seemed to be silently saying to me: "It is impossible for me to be more adorable. Take me, then, since you love me; take me in your arms, but carefully, without hurting me, without clasping me too hard. Oh! I burn with desire to receive your caresses! But I believe they would kill me." This thought aided me a little to counteract the effect her smile produced upon me.

I looked at her mouth at the moment she asked me: "Why do you look at me like that?" and at the moment when she asked: "Are we not happy?" I felt the blind desire of an awakened sensation in which died away the uneasy feeling which my recent passion had left in me. When she arose, I seized her impetuously in my arms, and fastened my lips to hers.

It was a lover's kiss that I gave her, a kiss long and deep, that stirred all the essence of our two beings. She sank back on the bench, exhausted.

"Oh! no, no, Tullio; I beg of you! Enough, enough! Let me regain a little strength," she begged, stretching her hands out to push me away. "Otherwise, I shall be unable to keep on my feet. See, I am half dead."

But there had sprung up in me extraordinary phenomena. That sensation had had the same effect on my mind as an impetuous wave that sweeps away all obstacles, effaces every imprint, and leaves the sand smooth. Everything was instantly levelled; and, suddenly, I found myself in anew state determined by the immediate influence of circumstances, by the pressure of the blood which began to tingle. I no longer knew but one thing. I had there before me the woman whom I desired, trembling, overwhelmed by my kiss—in short, mine entirely; around us blossomed a garden, filled with memories, filled with secrets; a deserted house awaits us behind the flowering bushes guarded by the familiar swallows.

"Do you think I am not strong enough to carry you?" I said to her, seizing her hands, interlacing my fingers in hers. "You used to be as light as a feather. Now you must be still lighter. Let us try!"

A dark shadow passed in her eyes. For a second, she seemed absorbed in thought, as when one deliberates and takes a rapid resolution. Then she shook her head, and throwing herself back, hanging to me by her outstretched arms, laughing with a laugh that revealed a little of her bloodless gum:

"Very well! Lift me," she said.

Scarcely had she risen than she fell against my breast; and then it was she who kissed me first, with a sort of convulsive furor, as if a prey to a sudden frenzy, as if she wished at one stroke to appease an atrociously painful thirst.

"Ah! It is killing me!" she repeated, when our lips had parted.

And that humid mouth, somewhat projecting, half-open, that had become redder, animated by languor, in that face so pale and frail, really gave me the indefinable impression that, of all that body similar to a corpse, the lips only were alive.

She murmured, dreamily, raising her closed eyes, the long lashes of which trembled as if a slight smile had filtered out from beneath the lids:

"Are you happy?"

I pressed her to my heart.

"Very well, let us go. Carry me where you will. Support me a little, Tullio; I feel as if my knees would give way."

"To the house, Juliana?"

"Where you wish."

I supported her by placing my arm around her waist, and I drew her along. She walked like a somnambulist. At first we were silent; and, each moment, we both turned together toward one another, to look at each other. She seemed to me to be really a new woman; my attention was arrested by the details, was preoccupied by them; a slight mark scarcely visible on the skin, a little dimple on the lower lip, the curvature of the lashes, a vein at the temple, the shadow that encircled the eyes, the infinitely delicate lobe of the ear. The brown mark on the neck was hardly hidden by the edging of lace; at each movement of the head that Juliana made, one saw it appear or disappear; and that little particularity irritated my impatience. I was intoxicated, and yet, I was very lucid. I heard the cries of the swallows, more numerous, the splashing of the jets of water in the fountain close by. I had the sensation that life was fleeting, that time was flying. And that sun, and those flowers, and those perfumes, and those sounds, and all the joyousness of the springtime, aroused in me for the third time an inexplicable emotion of anxiety.

"My willow!" cried Juliana, as we arrived at the fountain; and she ceased leaning on me, walked more rapidly. "Look, look how tall it is! Do you remember? It was only a branch."

After being pensive for a moment, she added in a different tone and in a low voice:

"I saw it before—you do not perhaps know? I came here, to the Lilacs, the other time."

She could not restrain a sigh. But immediately, as if to dissipate the shadow that these words had put between us, as if to remove the bitterness from her mouth, she bent toward one of the two faucets, drank a few mouthfuls, then turning towards me made a gesture as if asking a kiss. Her chin was still wet, and her lips cool. We both felt that what was to be must be, and we longed for the supreme reconciliation that every fibre of our beings demanded. When we disengaged ourselves, our eyes repeated the same intoxicating promise. And how extraordinary was the sentiment expressed by Juliana's physiognomy. But, then, I did not understand it! Later on, only during the hours that followed, did it become intelligible—only later I knew that a vision of death and a vision of voluptuousness had at the same time intoxicated the poor creature, and that in abandoning herself to the languors of her flesh she had made a funeral vow. I see as if I had her before my eyes, I shall always see that face full of mystery, under the shadow of that willow which rained on us its great vegetal chevelure. Beneath the sun, between the long branches of diaphanous foliage, silvery reflections from the water imparted a hallucinating vibration to the shade. The echoes combined, in a low and continuous monotone, the sonorous sound of the jets of water. All these appearances exalted my mind out of the world about me.

We went toward the house without speaking. My joy was so great at our reconciliation, our reawakened love, that my soul was transported in a whirlwind of joy so high, the pulsations of my arteries were so violent, that I thought: "Is this delirium? I felt nothing of this on my first marriage night, when I crossed the threshold of the nuptial chamber." Twice or three times I was seized by a savage transport, as if by a sudden attack of madness, and it is wonderful that I could contain myself: so great was my physical desire to take possession again of this woman. In her also the crisis must have become insupportable; because she stopped, and sighed: "Oh! my God, my God! This is too much!"

Suffocating, oppressed, she took my hand and placed it over her heart.

"Feel," said she.

I felt less the throbbing of her heart than the elasticity of her breast, through the cloth. I saw the iris in Juliana's eyes become hidden under the closing eyelids. For fear that she would faint, I supported her; then I bore her away, I carried her almost as far as the cypress, as far as a bench where we both sat down, both exhausted.

The house rose before us, as if in a dream.

Leaning her head on my shoulder, she said:

"Ah! Tullio, how terrible! Do you not think, too, that we could die from it?"

She added, gravely, in a voice that seemed to come from I know not what depths of her soul:

"Shall we both die?"

I felt a strange shudder, which convinced me that these words expressed an extraordinary state of mind, perhaps the same sentiment that had transformed her face beneath the willow, after the embrace, after the silent resolution. But this time, again, I could not understand. I understood only that we were both possessed by a species of delirium and that we were both breathing the atmosphere of a dream.

The house rose before us as in a vision. On the rustic façade, on every cornice, on every projection, along the gutters, on the architraves, beneath the window ledges, beneath the stones of the balconies, between the brackets, between the eminences, everywhere, the swallows had built their nests. The clay nests, by thousands, old and new, cemented together like the cells of a hive, had but few spaces between them. In these spaces, and on the slats of the Venetian shutters, and on the iron-work of the balustrades, the excrements made white patches like thinned chalk. Closed and without inhabitants, this house nevertheless was full of life—a bustling life, joyous and tender. The faithful swallows whirled around in their flight, with their cries, their scintillations, with all their tendernesses, ceaselessly. While, in the air, flocks pursued one another, strong, swift strokes, as rapid as arrows, with great alternating clamors, flying away, coming closer in the twinkling of an eye, brushing close to the trees, then rising up again in reflecting flashes in the sunlight, indefatigable. In and about the nests there was an activity of another sort, but not the less ardent. Some of the swallows remained for several moments fixed before the orifices; others sustained themselves on their wings while in flight; others, half-way in, showed on the outside only their little forked tails, quivering and agile, black and white on the grayish mud; others, half-way out, showed a small portion of their shining breasts and fawn-colored throats; others, up to then invisible, flew out with a piercing cry, and flew off. All this lively and joyous movement around the closed house, all that animation around the nests of our nest of the old days, formed a spectacle so delightful, a miracle of gentleness so exquisite, that for several minutes, as if during a respite from our fever, we forgot ourselves in its contemplation.

I broke the enchantment by rising.

"Here is the key," I said. "What are we waiting for?"

"Ah! Tullio, let us wait a little longer," she begged, in a sort of fright.

"I am going to open the door."

And I approached the door; I mounted the three steps, which produced on me the effect that they were those of an altar. At the moment when I was about to turn the key, with the trembling of a devotee who is opening a reliquary, I felt Juliana behind me. She had followed me, furtively, lightly as a shadow. I started.

"Is it you!"

"Yes, it is I," she murmured, caressingly, the exhalation of her breath warm on my ear.

She put her arms around my neck, so that her delicate wrists crossed beneath my chin.

That furtive act, the laugh that rippled in her voice and betrayed her infantile joy at having startled me, that manner of embracing me, all those agile graces recalled to me the Juliana of the old days, the young and tender companion of the happy years, the delicious creature with the long tresses, merry laughter, and girlish ways. An effluvium of the old-time happiness enveloped me, on the threshold of this house filled with memories.

"Shall I open?" I asked.

My hand rested on the key, ready to turn it.

"Open," she answered.

She did not loosen her hold on me, and I continued to feel her breath on my neck.

At the creaking made by the key in the lock, her arms clasped me more firmly; and she pressed against me, communicating to me her tremor. The swallows warbled over our heads, and their light twitterings contrasted, so to speak, with the depth of the silence.

"Go in," she murmured, without loosing her hold on me. "Go in, go in."

That voice, coming from lips so near yet invisible, real and yet mysterious, breathed all warm in my ear and yet so intimate that it seemed to speak to the centre of my soul, more feminine, softer than ever voice was before. I hear it still. I shall hear it forever.

"Go in, go in."

I pushed the door open. We crossed the threshold together, as if dissolved into one single person, noiselessly.

The vestibule was lighted by a high, round window. A swallow flew over our heads, warbling. We raised our eyes in surprise. A nest hung among the grotesques of the ceiling. There was a broken window-pane in the window. The swallow flew out through the opening, still warbling.

"Now, I am entirely yours, entirely," murmured Juliana, without detaching her hold on my neck.

But, by a sinuous movement, she fell on my breast, and met my mouth. We exchanged a long kiss. I said to her, with intoxication:

"Come, let us go up. Shall I carry you?"

In spite of the intoxication, I felt a sufficient strength in my muscles to carry her at one bound to the top of the stairway.

She answered:

"No. I can go up alone."

But to see her, to hear her, she seemed incapable of it.

I put my arms round her as I had already done in the garden. I raised her, I urged her up step by step. One would have said that in the house there was a deep and distant buzzing, like that heard in the folds of certain sea-shells; one would have said that no other sound penetrated there from the exterior.

When we were upon the landing, instead of opening the door facing us I turned to the right in the dark corridor, and I drew her on with my hand, without speaking. She was panting so that it pained me. Her agitation was communicated to me.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To our room," I answered.

One could scarcely see. I was guided as if by instinct. I found the knob, I opened; we entered.

The obscurity was partly illuminated by rays of light that filtered through the cracks of the shutters, and here a deeper buzzing was heard. I should have liked to run to the windows to immediately admit more light; but I could not leave Juliana; it seemed to me impossible to detach myself from her, to interrupt, were it but for a second, the contact of our hands, as if through the skin the live ends of our nerves were magnetically adhered. We advanced together, groping our way through the dark.

VIII.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon. About three hours had passed since our arrival at the Lilacs.

I had left Juliana alone for a few minutes; I had gone to call Calisto. The old man had brought the lunch basket; and on receiving for the second time a rather abrupt dismissal, he had shown, instead of surprise, a certain malicious good-nature.

Juliana and I now were seated at the table like two lovers, opposite each other, exchanging smiles. Before us were spread cold meats, preserved fruits, biscuits, oranges, and a bottle of Chablis. The room, with its ceiling decorated in rococo, with its light-colored walls, its pastoral scenes painted over the doors, had a sort of gayety now out of fashion, the air of a past century. Through the open balcony a very soft light entered, because long milky streaks were spread over the heavens. In the rectangle of the pale sky stood out "the old, venerable cypress, whose trunk arose from the midst of a rose-bush and whose top sheltered a nest of nightingales." Lower down, through the bent iron-work of the balustrade, could be seen the exquisite forest of light violet tone, the vernal glory of the Lilacs. The triple perfume, the vernal soul of the Lilacs, was disseminated in the calm and slow harmonious undulations.

"Do you remember?" said Juliana.

She repeated: "Do you remember?"

To her lips rose one by one the most distant reminiscences of our love, that, barely evoked by a discreet allusion, were, nevertheless, revived with an extraordinary intensity, in that place that had seen their birth, among propitious objects. But the sad disquietude and the frenzy of life that had taken possession of me in the garden on our first entry were irritated now to impatience, and suggested to me hyperbolical visions of the future that I opposed to the phantoms of an importunate past.

"To-morrow, in two or three days at the latest, we must come back here to stay, but alone. You see, there is nothing lacking; everything is in its place. If you wish, we could even remain here to-night. You do not wish to? Really, you do not wish to?"

By my voice, gesture, look, I sought to tempt her. My knees touched her knees. But she looked at me fixedly, without answering.

"Remember the first evening here, at the Lilacs! We strolled here after the Ave Maria, and saw the lights at the windows! Ah! you understand me well.... The lights that illuminate a house for the first time, the first evening! Do you remember? Up to now, you have done nothing but remember, remember. And yet, you see, all your recollections are not worth to me one minute of to-day, will not be worth one minute of to-morrow. Could you possibly doubt the happiness that awaits you? I have never loved you, Juliana, as much as I love you at this moment; never, never, do you hear? Never have I been as much yours as now, Juliana. I will recount to you, I will describe to you my days, in order that you may understand your miracles. After so much unhappiness, who could have hoped for anything like this? I will tell you. At certain times, it seemed to me I had gone back to the period of my adolescence, to the time of my youth. I felt myself candid as I did then, good, tender, simple. I remembered nothing more. All, all my thoughts were of you; all my emotions were centred in you. Sometimes the sight of a flower, of a little leaf, sufficed to make my soul overflow, so full it was. And you knew nothing, you perceived nothing, perhaps. I will tell you. The other day, Saturday, when I entered your room with the white hawthorns! I was as timid as an amorous boy, and, internally, I felt as if I were dying with desire to take you in my arms. Did you perceive it? I will tell you everything; I will make you laugh. That day, the curtains of the alcove permitted a view of your bed. I could not remove my eyes from it, I was all trembling. How I trembled! You cannot understand. Two or three times already, I have entered your room, alone, by stealth, my heart palpitating; and I have raised the curtains to look at your bed, to touch your cover, to bury my face in your pillow, like a fanatical lover. And certain nights, when all was asleep at the Badiola, I have ventured softly, softly, almost as far as your door; I thought I heard your breathing. Tell me, tell me, may I come to you to-night? Do you want me? Tell me, will you expect me? Can we sleep to-night separated from each other? No, it is not possible! Your cheek will find on my bosom its accustomed place, here, do you remember? How light you seemed, when you were sleeping."

"Be quiet, be quiet, Tullio!" she interrupted, supplicatingly, as if my words pained her.

She added, with a smile:

"You must not talk like that. I told you so just now. I am so weak! I am only a poor invalid. You make me feel dizzy. I can no longer stand upright. See to what a state you have reduced me. I am half dead."

She smiled, a weak, tired smile. Her eyelids were slightly reddened; but, in spite of the heaviness of the lids, the pupils burned with a febrile ardor, and constantly regarded me with an almost intolerable fixity, scarcely softened by the shadow of the eyelashes. In her entire manner there was some constraint, that my eyes could not discern nor my intelligence define. Had her face ever borne such a mysterious and disquieting character before? It seemed as if its expression became from moment to moment more complicated, vague, almost enigmatical. And I thought: "She is harassed by an internal tempest. She can no longer clearly distinguish what has taken place in her state. In her, without doubt, everything is upset. Has not one moment sufficed to change her existence?" And that profound expression attracted me, excited me ever more and more. The ardor of her look penetrated even to my marrow with a devouring fire. I was glad to see her so crushed: I was impatient to know her mine, to embrace her again, to hear her utter a new cry, to drink in her entire soul.

"You are not eating," I said, making an effort to dissipate the vapors that rapidly mounted to my brain.

"Nor are you."

"Take a bite, at least. Do you not recognize this wine?"

"Oh, yes! I recognize it."

"Do you remember?"

And we looked into the depths of each other's eyes, agitated by the evocation of the memory of our love, over which floated the delicate vapor of that pale and somewhat bitter wine, her favorite beverage.

"Let us drink together to our happiness!"

We clinked our glasses, and I drank mine at a single draught, but she did not even moisten her lip, arrested by an insurmountable repugnance.

"Well?"

"I cannot, Tullio."

"Why?"

"I cannot. Do not compel me to. One single drop would, I believe, suffice to make me ill."

She had become as pale as death.

"Juliana, you are ill!"

"A little. Let us rise. Let us go out on the balcony."

Putting my arm round her, I felt the softness of her waist; for, in my absence, she had removed her corset. I said to her:

"Would you like to lie down? You can rest, and I will remain near you."

"No, Tullio. You see, I already feel better."

We stopped on the sill of the balcony, with the cypress before us. She leaned against the side-post, and placed one hand on my shoulder.

From the projection of the architrave, below the cornice, hung a group of nests. The swallows were coming and going, with incessant activity. But below, the calm of the garden was so profound, the top of the cypress was so motionless, that the sounds of the wings, these flights, these cries, displeased me, tired me. Since, in this tranquil light, everything hid itself, I sought repose, a long period of silence, in order to taste in plenitude the suavity of the hour and the isolation.

"Are the nightingales always there?" I asked, pointing to the top of the venerable tree.

"Who knows? Perhaps."

"They sing at night. Would you not like to hear them again?"

"But at what time will Federico come back?"

"Let us hope, late."

"Oh, yes! late, very late," she cried, with such warm sincerity of hope that it caused me a thrill of joy.

"Are you happy?" I asked her, and I sought the answer in her eyes.

"Yes, I am happy," she answered, lowering her eyelids.

"You know that I love only you, that I am yours forever?"

"I know it."

"And you—how do you love me?"

"You will never know how much, my poor Tullio."

As she uttered these words, she left the side-post and leaned her entire weight on me, with one of those indescribable motions in which she threw all the sweetness and abandon that the most feminine of creatures could show to a man.

"How beautiful you are! How beautiful you are!"

Beautiful, in fact, beautiful from languor, beautiful in soft suppleness, and, how shall I say? so fluid that she made me think of the possibility of drinking her down in small portions, to quench my thirst of her. On the pallor of her face the mass of loosened hair seemed on the point of spreading out like a wave. The eyelashes threw a shadow on her cheeks, agitating me more than a look would have done.

"Nor will you ever know how much. If I told you the mad thoughts that are born in me! My happiness is so great that it becomes anguish, it makes me wish to die."

"Die!" she repeated, very low, with a feeble smile. "Who knows, Tullio, if you will not see me die before long?"

"Oh! Juliana!"

She turned round to look at me, and added:

"Tell me, what would you do if I were to die suddenly?"

"Child!"

"If, for instance, I were dead to-morrow?"

"Won't you be silent?"

I took her head, and kissed her on the mouth, cheeks, eyes, forehead, hair, with light and rapid kisses. She did not attempt to stop me; and even when I ceased, she murmured:

"More!"

"Let us return to our room," I begged her, drawing her away.

She permitted herself to be led.

In our room the balcony was permitted to remain open. And there entered through it, with the light, the musk-like odor of the tea-roses that flourished in the vicinity. Against the bright-colored tapestries, the little blue flowers seemed so faded that they were scarcely distinguishable. A corner of the garden was reflected in the mirror of a closet, receding in it like a chimerical landscape. Juliana's gloves, hat, and bracelet, lying on the table, seemed to have reawakened in this interior the happy life of long ago, to have shed a renewed intimacy.

"To-morrow, to-morrow, we must return here, not later," I said, burning with impatience, feeling an ardor and seduction from every one of these objects. "To-morrow we must sleep here. You wish it, too, do you not?

"To-morrow!"

"To begin to love again, in this house, in that garden, in this springtime; to begin to love once more as if oblivion had effaced everything; to seek once more one by one our old-time caresses, and find in each one a new savor, as if we had never before tasted it; to have before us days, long days..."

"No, no, Tullio; we must not speak of the future. You know that it is an evil omen. To-day, to-day—think of to-day, of the present hour."

IX.

"I believe I heard the horses' bells," said Juliana, rising. "It's Federico."

We listened. She must have been mistaken.

"Is it not time?" she asked.

"Yes, it is almost six o'clock."

"Oh, mio Dio!"

We listened again. But no sound announced the approach of the carriage.

"It would be better to go and see, Tullio."

I left the room and descended the stairs. I hesitated a little; a cloud was before my eyes; it seemed to me that a mist rose from my brain. From the little side door that opened in the surrounding wall, I called Calisto, whose dwelling was near by. I interrogated him. The carriage had not been seen yet.

The old man would have liked to detain me in conversation.

"Do you know, Calisto," I said to him, "that probably we will return here to-morrow to stay?"

He raised his arms in token of his delight.

"Really?"

"Really. We shall have time to chat. When you see the carriage, come and let me know. Good-night, Calisto."

I left him to reënter the house. The day was waning and the swallows cried still more loudly. The sky seemed to be alive with them, as the flocks rapidly cleft the air.

"Well?" asked Juliana, turning from the mirror which she had approached in order to adjust her hat.

"Nothing."

"Look at me. Is not my hair dishevelled?"

"No."

"But what a face! Just look."

One would have thought that she had stepped from a coffin, she seemed so exhausted. Great violet rings encircled her eyes.

"And yet I still live," she added, attempting to smile.

"Are you suffering?"

"No, Tullio. But I do not know what ails me. It seems to me that I am entirely empty, that my head is empty, my veins empty, my heart empty. You might say I had given you all. You see—I am now a shadow, a shadow of life."

While pronouncing these words, she smiled in a strange manner; she smiled a subtle and sibylline smile, that troubled me, that raised up in me confused inquietudes. I was too enervated, I was too languid, too much blinded by my intoxication; the activity of my mind had become indolent, my consciousness became dulled. No sinister suspicion had penetrated me yet. Meanwhile I looked at her attentively, I examined her with anxiety, without knowing why.

She turned to the mirror again, and put on her hat; then she approached the table, and took her bracelet and gloves.

"I am ready," she said. She seemed to be still seeking something, and added:

"I had a parasol, had I not?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Ah! I must have left it in the alley, on the bench."

"Let us go and look for it together."

"I am too tired."

"Then I will go alone."

"No, send Calisto."

"I will go myself. I will gather you a few lilacs, a bouquet of musk-roses. Shall I?"

"No, don't pluck the flowers."

"Come, sit down here while waiting. Perhaps Federico will be late."

I drew up an arm-chair for her from the balcony, and she sank into it.

"As you are going down," she said, "see if my cloak is at Calisto's. I did not leave it in the carriage, did I? I feel a little cold."

In fact, she was shivering.

"Shall I close the balcony?"

"No, no. Let me look at the garden. How beautiful it is now! Do you see? How beautiful it is!"

The garden, here and there, had vague golden tones. The blooming cimes of the lilac-trees took on an ardent violet tone in the fading light; and as, below, the rest of the flowering branches formed a bluish-gray mass that undulated in the wind, one could have imagined it the reflections of a changeable moiré. At the fountain, the weeping willows bent their graceful tresses. The water seen between the trees had the soft brilliancy of mother-of-pearl. This motionless brilliancy, these weeping trees, that delightful forest of flowers in that fading gold, composed an illusory, enchanting, unreal picture.

For several minutes we both remained silent beneath the empire of this magic. A confused melancholy enveloped my soul; the sombre despair that lies at the root of all human love arose within me. Before this ideal spectacle, my physical fatigue, the torpor of my senses, seemed to become heavier. I had become the prey of an uneasiness, a discontent, an indefinable remorse, like one experiences after an indulgence that has been too acute or too prolonged. I suffered.

Juliana said to me, as if in a dream:

"Yes, now, I would like to close my eyes never to reopen them again."

She added, with a thrill:

"I'm cold, Tullio. Go quickly."

Stretched out in the arm-chair, she huddled up as if to resist the fits of shivering that assailed her. Her face, particularly around the nose, was as transparent as certain white albatrosses. She was in pain.

"You don't feel well, poor soul!" I said to her, stirred by pity, and also by a slight fear, as I looked at her fixedly.

"I'm cold. Go, Tullio. Bring me my cloak, quick. Please!"

I ran down to Calisto's lodge, got the cloak, and went up again immediately. She hastened to put it on. I assisted her. When she was seated in the arm-chair again she said to me, burying her hands in her sleeves:

"That is better."

"Now, I'll go and fetch the parasol which you left over there."

"No. It doesn't matter."

I had a strange and mad desire to go back to the old stone bench where we had made our first halt, where she had cried, where she had spoken the three divine words: "Yes, still more." Was it a sentimental attraction? Was it the curiosity of a new sensation? Was it the fascination exercised over me by the mysterious aspect of the garden in the deepening twilight?

"I'll go and come back in a minute," I said.

I went out. When I was under the balcony, I cried:

"Juliana!"

She showed herself. I shall always retain in the eyes of my soul that silent, ghostly apparition, yet distinct as a living thing, her tall figure rendered still taller by the length of the amaranthine cloak, and, against this dark silhouette, that pale face, so pale! The words of Jacques to Amanda are indissolubly associated in my mind with that unchangeable vision:

"How pale you are to-night, Amanda! Have you opened your veins to tint your robe?"

She withdrew, or rather, to describe the sensation I felt, she evaporated. I advanced rapidly along the path, without full consciousness of what impelled me. I heard the sound of my own foot-falls resound in my brain. I was so preoccupied that I was obliged to stop to find out where I was. What caused this blind agitation in me? A simple physical cause, perhaps—a particular condition of my nerves. That is what I believed. Incapable of an effort of thought, of a methodical examination, of meditation, I submitted to the tyranny of my nerves, by which the external appearances were reflected, provoking phenomena of extraordinary intensity, as in hallucinations. But, like lightning-flashes, certain thoughts lit up all the rest, and increased the oppressive feeling that several unexpected incidents had already given rise to in me.

No, Juliana had not appeared to me to-day as I had imagined she would, as she should have done had she still been the same creature I knew before, "the Juliana of the old days." She had not assumed toward me the attitudes that I had expected, in certain circumstances. A strange element, something obscure, violent, and excessive had modified and deformed her personality. Must this change be attributed to the sickly condition of her organism? "I am ill, I am very ill," she had often repeated, as if in justification. Truly, illness produces profound changes, and may render a human being unrecognizable. But what was her malady? Was it the old one, not extirpated by the surgeon's steel, complicated perhaps, perhaps incurable? "Who knows if you will not see me die before long?" she had said in a singular tone, that may have been prophetic. She had spoken of death several times. She therefore knew that she carried within her a fatal germ? Was she dominated by this lugubrious thought? It was perhaps such a thought that had fired in her those sombre, almost hopeless, almost demented ardors, when she was in my arms? It was perhaps the great sudden light of happiness that had rendered more visible and more frightful the spectre that pursued her?

"Could it be possible that she might die? Could death strike her even while in my arms, in the midst of happiness?" I thought with a fright that froze me, that for several moments rooted me to the spot, as if the peril were immediate, as if Juliana had predicted truly when she had said:

"If, for instance, I were to die to-morrow?"

The twilight fell, slightly damp. Breaths of humid air ran over the bushes, causing a rustling like that which the rapid passage of animals through them would have produced. A few scattered swallows cleft the air with cries, like the flight of a stone propelled by a sling. At sunset, the horizon, still luminous, had the immense reverberations of a sinister forge.

I arrived at the bench, and found the parasol. I did not linger there, in spite of the recent memories, still keen, still warm, that disturbed my soul. It was there she had fallen fainting, vanquished; it was there I had spoken to her the supreme words, that I had made to her the intoxicating avowal: "You were in my house, while I sought you afar off"; there that I had gathered from her lips the breath that had ravished my soul to the supreme heights of joy; there that I had drunk her first tears, that I had heard her sobs, that I had uttered the obscure question: "It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?"

Only a few hours had passed, and all that was already so far! Only a few hours had passed, and already the happiness had faded away. Now with a new, but none the less dreadful signification, the question was repeated within me: "It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?" And my exaltation grew; and that uncertain light, and that silent nightfall, and those suspicious rustlings in the already shadowy bushes, and all those deceptive phantasmagorias of the twilight had for my mind a fatal meaning. "If really it were too late? If really she knew herself to be doomed? If she already knew that she carried death in her bosom? Tired of living, tired of suffering, hoping nothing more from me, not daring to kill herself at once with a fire-arm or with poison, she had perhaps cultivated, has perhaps nourished her malady, has kept it secret in order to facilitate its progress, to permit it to take root, to render it incurable. She has wished to arrive slowly and in secret at her final liberation. While observing herself she has become familiar with the science of her malady, and now she knows, she is sure, that she will succumb; she knows, too, that love, that voluptuousness, that my kisses will precipitate the catastrophe. I return to her for good; an unhoped for happiness opens out before her; she loves me, she knows that I love her greatly; in one day the dream has become for us a reality. And it is then that there rises to her lips the word, "Death!" Confusedly I saw pass before me the cruel images that had tormented me during those two hours of waiting, on the morning of the surgical operation, when I seemed to have before my eyes, as clearly as the figures on an anatomical atlas, all the frightful ravages produced by maladies in the organisms of women. And there recurred to me another recollection still more distant, with an accompaniment of precise images: the darkened room, the open window, the waving curtains, the flickering candle-flame before the dim mirror, the sinister appearance of things, and she, Juliana, upright, leaning against a closet, convulsed, writhing as if she had swallowed poison.... And the accusing voice, the same voice, also repeated to me: "It is for you, for you that she wanted to die. It is you, you, who have urged her on to death."

Seized by a blind fright, by a sort of panic, as if all these images had been veritable realities, I ran back to the house.

On raising my eyes, the house seemed without signs of life, the window openings and the balconies were filled with shadows.

"Juliana!" I cried, with supreme anguish, springing to the stairway, as if I feared I should not arrive soon enough to see her again.

What ailed me? What was this dementia?

I panted as I climbed the stairs in the semi-darkness. I rushed into the room.

"What is the matter?" asked Juliana, rising.

"Nothing, nothing. I thought you had called me. I have run a little. How are you feeling now?"

"I am so cold, Tullio, so cold! Feel my hands."

She stretched her hands out to me. They were icy.

"I am frozen all over like that."

"My God! Where did you get this terrible chill? What can I do to warm you up?"

"Do not worry, Tullio. This is not the first time. It lasts hours and hours. I can do nothing for it. I must wait until it passes away. But why is Federico so long? It is almost dark."

She sank back in the arm-chair, as if she had exhausted all her strength in pronouncing these words.

"I will close the window," I said, turning toward the balcony.

"No, no; leave it open. It is not the air that chills me. On the contrary, I need all the air I can get. Come here, nearer to me. Take this stool."

I knelt down. With a feeble gesture she passed her cold hand over my head and murmured:

"My poor Tullio!"

I broke out, incapable of containing myself:

"Oh! tell me, Juliana, my love, my life! In pity, tell me the truth. You are hiding something from me. Surely you have something you do not want to confess; there, in the centre of your forehead, there is a fixed idea, some sombre preoccupation that has not left you for an instant since we have been here, since we have been—happy. But are we truly happy? Are you, can you be happy? Tell the truth, Juliana. Why would you deceive me? Yes, it is true, you have been ill; you are still ill, it is true. But no, it is not that! There is something else that I do not understand, that I do not know of.... Tell me the truth, even if the truth must be to me annihilation. This morning when you sobbed, I asked you: 'Is it too late?' And you answered me: 'No, no.' Then I believed your words. But might it not be too late for another motive? Could not something prevent you from enjoying the great happiness into which we have just entered? I mean something you know, that you already foresee? Tell me the truth."

I looked at her fixedly; and, as she remained silent, I ended by seeing nothing but her large eyes, extraordinarily large, deep and motionless. All else had disappeared. And I was compelled to close my eyes to dissipate the sensation of terror that these eyes caused in me. How long did this last? An hour? A second?

"I am ill," she said at last, with agonized slowness.

"Ill? But what's the matter?" I stammered, beside myself, convinced that, in her tone, I detected an avowal that corresponded with my suspicion. "What's the matter? Dangerously?"

I know not in what voice, I know not in what tone, I know not with what gesture I articulated the last question; I do not even know if it really and entirely left my lips, or if she heard it entirely.

"No, no, Tullio; it is not that. I meant, no—I meant that it is not my fault if I am a little strange. It is not my fault.... You must have patience with me; you must take me now as I am. Believe me, there is nothing more. I am concealing nothing from you. I shall be cured perhaps, later; yes, I shall be cured. You will be patient, will you not? You will be good. Come here, Tullio, my soul! You, too, it seems to me, are a little strange, a little suspicious. You have sudden fears; you turn white. Who knows what you suppose? Come, come here; give me a kiss ... another one ... another one.... That's right.... Embrace me, warm me up again.... There is Federico."

She spoke in a broken and rather low voice, with that inexpressible, caressing, tender, restless expression that she had already done a few hours before on the bench, to calm me and console me. I embraced her. In the wide and low arm-chair, she, so thin, made room for me at her side, and pressed close to me, shivering, and gathered up the end of her cloak to cover me with it. We were as if on a couch, entwined, breast to breast, our breaths mingling. And I thought: "If my breath, if my contact, could imbue her with all my heat!" And I made an illusory effort of will to bring about this transfusion.

"This evening," I whispered, "this evening, I will hold you better; you won't tremble, then..."

"Yes, yes."

"You'll see how nicely I'll hold you. I'll put you to sleep. All night long you will sleep on my heart."

"Yes, yes."

"I will watch over you; I will quench my thirst with your breath; I will read in your face the dreams you are dreaming. You will perhaps speak my name, dreaming."

"Yes, yes."

"At that time, on certain nights, you spoke in your dream. How charming you were! Ah! what a voice! You cannot know.... A voice that you could never have heard, that I alone know—I alone... And I will hear it again. Who knows what you will say? You will speak my name perhaps. How I love the movement of your mouth when it pronounces the u of my name! One could call it the outline of a kiss.... You know? I will prompt words into your ear that they may enter into your dream. Do you remember that at that time, on certain mornings, I divined your dreams? Ah! you will see, dear soul; I will be more caressing than at that time, You will see how tender I will be in order to cure you. You need so much affection, poor soul!"

"Yes, yes," she repeated every moment, yieldingly, favoring thereby my last illusion, and also augmenting that sort of drowsy intoxication that arose from my own voice and the belief that my words were cradled there like a voluptuous song.

"Did you hear anything?" I asked suddenly; and I raised myself a little in order to hear better.

"What? Is it Federico?"

"No; listen."

We both listened, our eyes turned toward the garden. The garden was but a confused and violet-colored mass, touched here and there by the darkening light of the dying day. A zone of light persisted on the limit of the sky, a long, tricolored zone: below of a blood-red, then orange, then green, then a fading vegetable green. In the silence of the twilight a strong and limpid voice resounded, like the prelude of a flute.

The nightingale was singing.

"It is on the cypress," murmured Juliana.

We both listened, our eyes turned toward the edge of the horizon that paled beneath the impalpable ashy color of the evening. My soul was in suspense, as if it had expected from this language some high revelation of love. "What, then, is this poor creature at my side feeling? To what summit of despair is this poor soul raised?"

The nightingale was singing. At first, it was like an explosion of melodious joyfulness, a burst of smooth trills that rippled with the sound of pearls resounding on the crystals of musical glasses. First pause. Then arose a roll of marvellous agility, extraordinarily sustained, in which was mingled the energy that attempts a burst of courage, a defiance thrown to an unknown rival. Second pause. Then a theme on three notes, of an interrogative expression, unrolled the chain of its light variations, repeating five or six times the sweet question, modulated as if on a slender reed flute, on a pastoral pipe. Third pause. And the chant became an elegy, developed in a minor key, became softened like a sigh, weakened to a plaint, described the sorrow of a solitary lover, the vexation of desire, the waiting in vain, burst into a final appeal, unexpected, piercing like a cry of anguish, and died away. New pause, more prolonged. Then there were new tones, that did not seem to issue from the same throat, so humble, timid, tearful, were they, so much did they resemble the piping of newly hatched birds, the twittering of a little sparrow; then, with admirable flexibility, these innocent accents were transformed into a whirlwind of notes more and more hurried, that sparkled in trains of trills, vibrated in dazzling roulades, softened into bold periods, descended, ascended, mounted to prodigious heights. The singer became intoxicated by his song. With pauses so brief that they scarcely permitted the notes to die away, his intoxication overflowed in a melody that varied without cease, passionate and soft, broken and vibrant, light and grave, interspersed now with feeble moans and plaintive supplications, now with abrupt lyric bursts, supreme adjurations. Even the garden seemed to be listening; the sky seemed to incline toward the venerable tree whose top sheltered the invisible poet who shed these torrents of poetry. The forest of flowers respired deeply and silently. At sunset several yellow streaks of light lingered on the horizon, and this last glance of daylight was sad, almost mournful. But a star appeared, palpitating and trembling like a drop of timorous dew.

"To-morrow," I murmured, almost unconsciously.

And that word, to me so full of promise, responded to an internal supplication.

To better listen, we had raised ourselves a little and we had remained several minutes in that position, attentive. Suddenly, I felt Juliana's head fall on my shoulder, heavily, like a thing without life.

"Juliana! Juliana!" I cried with fright.

By the movement I made, her head fell back, heavily, like a thing without life.

"Juliana!"

She did not hear. When I saw the cadaverous pallor of that face lit up by the last yellowish rays of light from the balcony, I was struck by a terrible thought. Distracted, allowing Juliana to fall back on the back of the arm-chair, inert, calling her ceaselessly by name, I began to open her corsage with contracted fingers, anxious to feel her heart.

My brother's jovial voice called out:

"Where are you, you lovers?"

X.

She had rapidly regained consciousness. Although scarcely able to stand, she wanted to immediately enter the carriage and go back to the Badiola.

And now, covered with our rugs, she sat back in her seat motionless, exhausted, mute. My brother and I, from time to time, looked at her with uneasiness. The coachman whipped up his horses. Their rapid trot resounded on the road, bordered here and there by blossoming bushes, on that mild April evening, beneath a cloudless sky.

Every now and then, Federico and I asked: "How are you feeling, Juliana?"

She answered: "So, so. A little better."

"Are you cold?"

"Yes; a little."

She answered with a manifest effort. One would almost have said that our questions irritated her; so much so, that finally, as Federico persisted in engaging her in conversation, she said:

"Excuse me, Federico. It tires me to speak."

The hood had been lowered, and Juliana was in the shadow, invisible, buried beneath the covers. Twenty times I bent over her to look at her face, either with the hope that she was napping, or with the fear that she had collapsed from weakness. But each time, I felt the same sensation of surprise and of fear on noticing, in the dark, that her eyes were wide open and staring.

There was a long silence. Federico and I were also silent. The trot of the horses was not rapid enough to suit me. I wanted the coachman to make the horses gallop.

"Faster, Giovanni."

It was almost ten o'clock when we arrived at the Badiola.

My mother awaited us, very much worried by our delay. When she saw Juliana's condition, she said:

"I knew the fatigue would hurt her."

Juliana tried to reassure her.

"It is nothing, mother.... You will see, to-morrow morning I shall be well. I am just a little tired...."

But, on looking at her in the light, my mother cried out, alarmed:

"Mio Dio! your face frightens me. You can't stand on your feet. Edith, Cristina, quick, run upstairs and warm the bed. And you, Tullio, come; we will carry her."

Juliana resisted obstinately.

"No, no, mother; it is nothing, do not be frightened."

"I will go to Tussi with the carriage, and bring the doctor," suggested Federico. "I will be back in half an hour."

"No, Federico, no," cried Juliana almost violently, as if this proposition exasperated her. "I do not wish it. The doctor can do nothing. I know what I must do. I have everything upstairs. Let us go up, mother. Dear me! How easily you are alarmed! Let us go up. Let us go up."

It seemed as if she had suddenly recovered her strength. She made several steps without assistance. Going up the stairs, my mother and I supported her. But, in her room, she had an attack of convulsive vomiting that lasted several minutes. The women began to disrobe her.

"Go out, Tullio; leave the room, I beg of you," she said. "You may return later. Mother will remain with me. Do not be uneasy."

I went out. I remained in an adjoining room, seated on a divan, waiting. I heard the hurried movements of the maids; I was being consumed with impatience: "When may I return? When may I find myself again alone with her? I will watch there, I will pass the entire night at her bedside. In a few hours perhaps she will be calmer, she will feel better. I will stroke her hair, and perhaps succeed in lulling her to sleep. Who knows if, in that drowsiness which is neither wakefulness nor slumber, she might not say 'Come.' I have a strange confidence in the efficacy of my caresses. I hope yet that this night may have a delightful end." And, as always, in the midst of the anguish that the thoughts of Juliana's sufferings caused me, the sensual vision acquired determined contours, became a clear and persistent vision. "White as her night-dress, in the light of the lamp that burned behind the curtains of the alcove, she awoke after a first, very short slumber, looked at me with her half-closed eyes, languishing, and murmured: 'Go to sleep!'"

Federico entered.

"Well," he said affectionately, "it seems that it is nothing. I have spoken to Miss Edith on the stairway. Will you come down and take something? The table is set downstairs."

"No, I am not hungry now. Later on, perhaps.... I expect to be called."

"If I am not required, I will go."

"Go, Federico; I will come down very soon. Thanks."

I glanced after him as he withdrew, and once more the sight of my good brother inspired in me a feeling of confidence; again I felt my heart dilate.

Almost three minutes passed. The clock on the wall facing me ticked off the time with the beats of its pendulum. The hands pointed to a quarter to eleven. As I rose impatiently to go toward Juliana's room, my mother entered, agitated, and said in a low voice:

"She is quieter now. What she must have is rest. Poor child!"

"May I go in?"

"Yes; but don't disturb her."

As I made a motion to go cut, my mother recalled me.

"Tullio!"

"What, mother?"

She seemed to hesitate.

"Tell me ... have you seen the doctor since the time of the operation?"

"Yes, several times.... Why?"

"Did he speak about the danger——"

She hesitated and then added:

"About the danger Juliana might run by a new pregnancy?"

I had not spoken to the doctor, and I did not know what to answer. In my agitation I repeated:

"Why?"

She still hesitated.

"Have you not noticed that Juliana is pregnant?"

The blow was too sudden for me to be able at first to grasp the truth.

"Pregnant?" I stammered.

My mother took my hands

"Well, well, Tullio?"

"I did not know."

"You frighten me. So the doctor——"

"Yes, the doctor——"

"Come, Tullio, sit down."

She made me sit down on the divan. She looked at me with fear, waiting for me to speak. For several moments, although she was before my eyes, I ceased to see her. Then, suddenly, a brutal light burst in on my mind, and the drama was all clear to me.

Where did I find the strength to resist? What preserved my reason? Without doubt I drew from the very excess of my pain and horror the heroic sentiment that saved me.

I said:

"I did not know—Juliana told me nothing—I perceived nothing—it is a surprise—yes, the doctor thinks there is still some danger— That is why the news has made this impression on me— You know, Juliana is so weak now— However, the doctor did not say it was serious— The operation was a success—we will see—we will send for him, we will consult him——"

"Yes, that is indispensable."

"But, are you sure, mother? Has Juliana told you? Or——"

"I noticed it myself. It is impossible to be mistaken. Up to within the last two or three days, Juliana denied it, or at least, pretended that she was not certain. Knowing how easily you are alarmed, she begged me to say nothing to you. But I wanted to tell you—you know Juliana: she takes so little care of her health! Just think. Since she lives here, instead of getting better she seems to be getting worse every day. Formerly, a week in the country sufficed to make a new woman of her, do you remember?"

"Yes, that is true."

"One can never take enough precautions. You must write immediately to Doctor Vebesti."

"Yes, at once."

As I felt incapable of controlling myself longer I arose, and added:

"I'll go to see her."

"Go; but let her rest to-night, let her remain quiet. I am going downstairs. I'll come up again."

"Thank you, mother."

I touched her forehead with my lips.

"Dear boy!" she murmured, as she withdrew.

I stopped on the threshold of the door opposite, turned around, and watched her gentle and still erect figure disappear.

I felt an indescribable sensation, similar, without doubt, to that which I should have felt had the entire house collapsed about me in an explosion. In me, about me, all fell, sank irresistibly into an abyss.

XI.

Who has not at times heard some unfortunate being say: "In one hour I lived ten years." It is something inconceivable. Well, I understand it. During that short interview with my mother, so peaceful apparently, had I not lived ten years? The acceleration of the inner life of man is the most prodigious and frightful phenomenon there is in the world.

What must be done? I was seized by frenzied desires to flee far away in the night, or to run to my room and lock myself in, to remain alone to contemplate my ruin, to review its extent. But I was able to resist. It was on that night that the superiority of my nature was revealed, was able to shake off every atrocious torture of my most virile faculties. And I thought: "It is absolutely necessary that none of my actions should seem singular or inexplicable, either to my mother or to my brother, or anyone else in this house."

I stopped before the door of Juliana's room, powerless to repress the physical trembling that shook me. But the sound of a footstep in the corridor determined me to resolutely enter.

Miss Edith emerged from the alcove, on tiptoe. She made me a sign to make no noise, and said, in a low voice:

"She is going to sleep."

And she went out, softly closing the door behind her.

The lamp burned with a tranquil and even light, suspended from the centre of the ceiling. Across a seat was thrown the amaranthine cloak; on another, the black satin corset, the corset that, at the Lilacs, Juliana had removed during my brief absence; across another chair, the gray gown, the same that she had worn with so much distinction in the beautiful forest of flowering lilacs. The sight of these objects upset me so that I felt a new desire to flee. But I walked toward the alcove, and drew aside the curtains. I saw the bed; I saw the dark spot on the pillow made by the hair, but not the face; I saw the form of the body huddled up beneath the covers. In my mind the brutal truth presented itself with the most ignoble reality. "She has been possessed by another." And a series of odious physical visions passed before the eyes of my soul, those eyes that I had not the power to close. And these were, not only the visions of the things accomplished, but also those that must necessarily take place. I was forced to see, with inexorable precision, what was about to happen to Juliana—my Dream! my Ideal!

Who could have imagined a more cruel punishment? And all was true, all was certain!

When the pain exceeds the strength, one instinctively seeks in doubt a momentary extenuation of the intolerable suffering; one thinks: "Perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps my misfortune is not such as it appears to be, perhaps this excess of pain is groundless?" And to prolong the respite, one's perplexed intelligence is applied to gain a more exact idea of the reality. But I, I had not a single moment of doubt, I had not a single moment of incertitude.

It is impossible for me to explain the phenomenon that developed in my consciousness, which had become extraordinarily lucid. It seemed that, spontaneously, by a secret process realized in the dark sphere of the inner being, all the unperceived symptoms that had connection with the horrible thing were coördinated to form a logical idea, complete, rational, definite, irrefutable; and now, that idea manifested itself all at once, surged up in my consciousness with the rapidity of a fragment of cork which, no longer retained at the bottom of water by hidden bonds, floats to the surface, there to remain, insubmersible. Every symptom, every proof, was there, in perfect order. No effort was needed to find them, to choose them, to group them. Insignificant and distant facts were illuminated by a new light; fragments of recent life regained their color. The unaccustomed aversion of Juliana for flowers, for odors, her strange agitations, her ill-dissimulated nauseas, her sudden pallors, that sort of continual preoccupation visible between her eyebrows, the great fatigue indicated by certain positions; and besides, the pages marked by the nail in the Russian book, the reproach of the old man to the Count Besoukhow, the supreme question of the little Princess Lisa, and that gesture with which Juliana had taken the book from my hands; and then the scenes at the Lilacs, the tears, the sobs, the ambiguous phrases, the sibylline smiles, the almost mournful ardors, the volubility of language, almost insane, the evocation of death—all these signs grouped themselves around my mother's words, were engraved in the centre of my soul.

My mother said: "It is impossible to be mistaken. Up to within two or three days ago, Juliana had denied it, or, at least, pretended that she was not certain.... Knowing how easily you are alarmed, she begged me to say nothing to you." The truth could not be more evident. Henceforth, everything was certain!

I entered the alcove and approached the bed. The curtains fell behind me; the light became feebler. Anxiety suspended my respiration, and all my blood stood still in my arteries, when I came to the bedside and bent over to see more closely Juliana's head, almost hidden by the sheet. I do not know what would have occurred, at this moment, had she raised her face and spoken.

Was she asleep? The forehead only, as far as the eyebrows, was visible.

I remained there for several minutes, standing, expectant. But was she asleep? She was motionless, lying on her side. From the mouth, hidden by the sheet, not the slightest sound of respiration could be heard. The forehead only, as far as the eyebrows, was uncovered.

What countenance would I have shown had she perceived my presence? The hour was poorly chosen to interrogate her, for explanations. If she had suspected that I knew all, to what extremities might she not have been carried during the night? I was therefore constrained to simulate tenderness, I was compelled to affect perfect ignorance, to persist in the expression of sentiments that, a few hours ago, at the Lilacs, had been spoken in the most gentle words. "This evening, to-night, in your bed—you will see how kind I will be. I will put you to sleep. All night long you will sleep on my heart."

On looking around me distractedly, I discovered on the carpet the slender and polished shoes, on the back of a chair the long, ash-colored silken hose, the satin garters, another object of secret elegance, all things that my lover's eyes had already delighted in. And the jealousy of my senses gnawed me so furiously that it was a miracle that I restrained myself from throwing myself on Juliana, from awakening her, from reviling her with the absurd and coarse words which this sudden rage inspired in me.

I withdrew, tottering, and left the alcove. I thought, with blind fright: "How will it end?"

I was inclined to go away. "I will go down—I will tell my mother that Juliana is asleep, that her slumber is very calm; I will tell her that I need rest. I will take refuge in my room. And to-morrow morning..." But I remained where I was, perplexed, incapable of crossing the threshold, assailed by a thousand fears. I turned again toward the alcove by an abrupt movement, as if I had felt a look fixed on me. It seemed to me that the curtains were waving; but I was mistaken. And yet, through the curtains, something like a magnetic shadow came and penetrated me, something against which I was without resistance. I reëntered the alcove with a shudder.

Juliana still lay in the same attitude. Was she asleep? The forehead alone, as far as the eyebrows, was uncovered.

I sat down near the bedside, and waited. I looked at that forehead, white as the sheet, delicate and pure as a host, that sister's forehead, which I had so many times religiously kissed, which my mother's lips had so many times touched. Not the slightest stain could be perceived on it. It seemed the same as it ever was. Yet, henceforth, nothing in the world could remove the stain which my soul's eyes saw on that white brow!

Certain words which I had spoken in the exaltation of intoxication recurred to my memory: "I will watch over you, I will read on your face the dreams that you will dream." I thought also: "She repeated at every moment: 'Yes, yes.'" I wondered: "What life does she lead internally? What are her projects? What resolutions has she made?" And I looked at her forehead. And, ceasing to consider my own pain, I applied all my powers to picture to myself her pain, to understand her pain.

Truly, her own despair must be frightful, ceaseless, limitless. My punishment was also her punishment, and perhaps more fearful punishment still for her than for me. Over there at the Lilacs, in the alley, on the bench, in the house, she had certainly felt the sincerity of my words, she had certainly read my sincerity in my face, she had believed in the greatness of my love.

"You were in the house, while I sought you afar off! Oh! tell me, is not this confession worth all your tears? Do you not wish you had shed even more, many more, so as to purchase this certitude?"

"Yes, many more."

That is what she had replied, with a sigh that, really, had appeared to me divine.

"Yes, many more!"

She would have liked to shed other tears, she would have liked to suffer another martyrdom as the price of this avowal! And, when she saw at her feet, more passionate than ever, the man so long lost and wept for, when she saw opening before her an unknown paradise, she had felt herself to be impure, she had the physical sensation of her impurity, she had held my head on her breast. Ah! it is truly incomprehensible why her tears have not burned my face, that I have been able to drink them without being poisoned.

I relived our entire day in an instant; I saw again all the changing expressions, even the most furtive, that had appeared on Juliana's face since our arrival at the Lilacs; I understood them all. A great light illuminated me. Oh! when I spoke to her of the morrow, when I spoke to her of the future—what terrors that word to-morrow, coming from my lips, must have had! And to my memory recurred the short dialogue that we had had on the threshold of the balcony, facing the cypress. She had repeated in a very low voice, with a feeble sigh: "Die!" She had spoken of approaching death. She had asked: "What would you do if I died suddenly? If, for instance, I died to-morrow?" Later on, in our room, she had cried, pressing me close: "No, no, Tullio; we must not speak of the future. Think of to-day, of the passing hour!" By such actions, by such words, did she not betray a resolution of death, a tragic design? It was evident that she had resolved to kill herself, that she would kill herself, perhaps this very night even, before the inevitable to-morrow, since there was no other resource for her.

When the fright that the thought of this imminent peril caused me had subsided, I reflected: "What would have the gravest consequences, Juliana's death, or her preservation? Since the ruin is irremediable, and the abyss bottomless, an immediate catastrophe would, perhaps, be better than an indefinite continuation of the frightful drama." And, in imagination, I accompanied the phases of that new maternity, saw the new being procreated, the intruder who bore my name, who would be my heir, who would usurp my mother's caresses and those of my daughters, of my brother. "Assuredly, death only can interrupt the fatal course of these events. But would the suicide remain secret? By what means would Juliana take her life? If it were proved that death were voluntary, what would my mother and brother think? What a blow that would be to my mother! And Maria? And Natalia? And what would I do, myself?"

The truth is that I could not bring myself to conceive of my own existence without Juliana. I loved the poor creature even in her impurity. Excepting that sudden attack of anger which carnal jealousy had provoked in me, I had never yet felt against her any emotion whatever of hate, or of rancor, or of contempt. No thought of vengeance had crossed my soul. On the contrary, I felt a profound compassion for her. I accepted, since the beginning, all the responsibility of her fall. A proud and generous sentiment sustained me, exalted me: "She bent her head beneath my blows, she kept silent, she set me an example of virile courage, of heroic abnegation. Now, it is my turn. I must render her the same. I must save her, at any price." And this nobility of soul, this good impulse, came to me from her.

I drew closer to look at her. She still remained motionless in the same attitude, with her forehead uncovered. I thought: "Is she asleep?" And if, on the contrary, she were pretending to be asleep, to remove every suspicion, to make believe that she is quiet, that she may be left alone? Assuredly, if it is her project not to live until the morrow, she is seeking by every means to favor its execution. She simulates slumber.

"If her sleep were real, she would not be so quiet, so calm, with such superexcited nerves as she has. I must shake her." But I hesitated. "If she were really asleep? Sometimes, after a great output of nerve force, even in the midst of the rudest moral anxieties, one sleeps a leaden slumber, like a syncope. Oh! that she may slumber until to-morrow! And to-morrow, that she may arise recovered, be strong enough to support the explanation that has become inevitable between us!" I looked fixedly at that brow, white as the sheet, and, on bending over a little more, I remarked that it was dotted with perspiration. A bead of perspiration glistened on the eyebrow. And that bead suggested to me the idea of the cold sweat that indicates the action of narcotic poisons. A sudden flash of suspicion came upon me. "Morphine!" Instinctively, my glance turned to the night table, on the other side of the bed, to look for the small bottle marked with the skull and cross-bones, familiar symbols of death.

There, on the table, were a water bottle, a glass, a candlestick, a handkerchief, several glistening pins; that was all. I made a rapid and complete examination of the alcove. Anguish choked my throat. "Juliana has morphine; she always has on hand a certain quantity of it in a liquid state for her injections. I am sure that she has had the idea of poisoning herself. Where has she hidden the little bottle?" Engraved in my mind I had the image of the small glass vial that I had seen in Juliana's hands, ornamented with the sinister label that pharmacists use, in order to indicate a toxic. My excited imagination suggested to me: "And if she has already drunk it? That sweat..." I trembled on my seat, and I felt the agitation of a rapid debate. "But when? How? She has not been left alone. It requires only an instant to empty a bottle. Yet, without doubt, she would have vomited.... And that attack of convulsive vomiting, just now, when she arrived at the house? Premeditating suicide, she had doubtless carried the morphine with her. Was it not possible that she had drunk it before arriving at the Badiola, in the carriage, in the dark? In fact, she had prevented Federico from going for the doctor." I understood but imperfectly the symptoms of morphine poisoning. In my ignorance, that white and moist brow, that perfect immobility, overwhelmed me. I was on the point of arousing her. "But if I am mistaken? She will awake, and what will I have to say to her?" It seemed to me that the first word, that the first look exchanged between us, must produce on me an extraordinary effect, of an unforeseen, unimaginable violence. It seemed to me that I would not have the power to control myself, to dissimulate, and that on looking at me she would divine immediately that I knew all. And then?

I strained my ear, hoping and fearing my mother's coming. And then (I would not have trembled so strongly on raising the edge of a shroud to see the face of a dead person), I slowly uncovered Juliana's face.

She opened her eyes.

"Ah! Is it you, Tullio?"

Her voice was natural. And I most unexpectedly could speak.

"Were you asleep?" I said, avoiding her eyes.

"Yes, I dozed off."

"Then I awoke you.... Forgive me. I wished to uncover your mouth. I feared that your breathing might be impeded—that the coverlid would suffocate you."

"Yes, that is true. I am warm now, too warm. Remove one of the coverings, please."

I rose to remove one of the covers. It is impossible for me to define the state of consciousness in which I accomplished these acts, in which I pronounced and heard these words, while present during these incidents, and which happened as naturally as if there had been no change, as if around us there had been no adultery, no disenchantment, remorse, jealousy, fear, death, every human atrocity.

"Is it very late?" she asked me.

"No; it is not yet midnight."

"Is mother in bed?"

"No, not yet."

After a pause:

"And you—are you not going to bed? You must be tired."

I knew not what to answer. Should I reply that I would remain? Ask her permission to stay? Repeat to her the tender words that I had spoken in the armchair, in our room, at the Lilacs? But, if I remained, how would I pass the night? There, on the chair, watching her, or else in the bed, near her? What attitude should I take? Should I be able to dissimulate to the end?

She went on:

"You had better go, Tullio—to-night.... I need nothing. All I want is rest. If you remain, it would not do me any good. You had better go, Tullio, to-night."

"But you might want something."

"No. And, besides, Cristina stays with me."

"I will lie on the sofa."

"Why should you upset yourself? You are very tired: that can be seen in your face. And, besides, if I knew you were there I could not sleep. Be good, Tullio! To-morrow morning, early, you may come and see me. We both need rest, now, complete rest."

Her voice was low and caressing, without any unusual intonation. Excepting her persistence in persuading me to retire, she exhibited no other indication of the fatal preoccupation. She seemed crushed, but calm. From time to time she closed her eyes, as if slumber weighted down her eyelids. What should I do? Leave her? But it was precisely her calm that frightened me. Such a calm could only come to her from the fixity of her resolution. What to do? Everything considered, my very presence during the night would have been useless if she had prepared for suicide and provided herself with the means. She could, without any difficulty, have put her project into execution. Was that means really morphine? And where had she hidden that little vial? Beneath her pillow? In the drawer of the night table? How could I look for it? I should have to speak, to say unexpectedly: "I know that you want to kill yourself." But what a scene would follow! I could not have kept silent about the rest. And what a night that would have been!

So many perplexities exhausted my energy, dissolved it.

My nerves were unstrung. The physical fatigue rapidly increased. My entire organism arrived at that condition of extreme weakness in which the functions of the will are on the point of being suspended, in which the actions and reactions cease to correspond, or cease to accomplish their end. I felt myself incapable of resisting any longer, of combating, of accomplishing no matter what necessary act. The sensation of my weakness, the sensation of the fatality of what had happened and what was about to happen, still paralyzed me; my being seemed to be struck by a sudden torpor. I felt a blind desire to hide myself again from the last and obscure consciousness of my being. In short, my anguish led to this desperate thought: "Come what will, I, too, have the resource of death."

"Yes, Juliana," I said, "I will leave you in peace. Sleep. We will see one another to-morrow."

"You can scarcely keep your eyes open."

"No, it is true, I am very tired. Good-by; goodnight."

"Will you not give me a kiss, Tullio?"

A shudder of instinctive repugnance passed through my body. I hesitated.

At that moment my mother entered.

"What! you are awake?" she cried.

"Yes, but I'm going to sleep again immediately."

"I have been to see the children. Natalia is not asleep. She said: 'Has mamma come back?' She wanted to come..."

"Why did you not tell Edith to bring her to me? Is Edith already in bed?"

"No."

"Good night, Juliana," I interrupted.

I approached her, and bent over to kiss the cheek that she offered me, raising herself a little on her elbow.

"Good night, mother, I am going to bed. My eyes are closing with sleep."

"Won't you take something? Federico is still waiting for you down-stairs."

"No, mother; I do not care for anything. Good night."

I also kissed my mother's cheek, and I left hastily, without glancing at Juliana; I collected the little strength left me, and scarcely had I crossed the threshold than I began to run to my room, fearing to fall before I reached the door.

I threw myself on my bed face down. I was seized by that spasm which precedes great paroxysms of tears, when the suffocation of anguish is about to burst out, when the tension is about to be relaxed. But the spasm was protracted, and the tears did not come. It was horrible suffering. An enormous weight bore my members down, a weight that I felt, not at the surface, but within, as if my bones and muscles had become masses of lead. And my brain still thought on! And my consciousness still remained vigilant!

"No, I must not leave her. No, I must not agree to let her leave me thus. When my mother retires, she will kill herself—that is sure. Oh, the sound of her voice, when she expressed the desire to see Natalia!" A hallucination suddenly seized upon me. My mother left the chamber. Juliana sat up in bed, and listened intently. Then, certain at last of being alone, she took the bottle of morphine from the night table. She did not hesitate a second, but with a determined gesture emptied it at one gulp, covered herself again with the bedclothes, and lay on her back to await the end.... The imaginary vision of the cadaver acquired such an intensity that, like one demented, I arose. I made three or four turns in the room, hurt myself against the furniture, stumbled over the carpet, with terrified gestures. I opened a window.

The night was calm, filled with the monotonous and continuous croaking of frogs. The stars were twinkling. The Great Bear scintillated before me, very brightly. Time passed.

I remained for several minutes at the balcony, in contemplation, my eyes fixed on the great constellation that, to my troubled sight, seemed to come nearer. I did not really know what I expected. My mind wandered. I had a singular sensation of the space of that immense sky. Suddenly, during a sort of irresolute suspension, as if, in the depth of unconsciousness, some obscure effluvium had acted on my being, there spontaneously surged up in me the question that I had not as yet understood: "What have you done to me?" And the vision of the cadaver, for an instant forgotten, reappeared before my eyes.

My horror was such that, without knowing what I wished to do, I turned about, left the room precipitately, and directed my steps towards Juliana's room.

I met Miss Edith in the corridor.

"Where did you come from, Edith?" I asked.

I saw that my appearance stupefied her.

"I took Natalia to Signora, who wished to see her; but I had to leave her there. It was impossible to make her go back to her own bed. She cried so hard that Signora consented to keep her with her. Let us hope that Maria will not waken up."

"Ah! so then..."

My heart beat so violently that I could not speak connectedly.

"Then Natalia is sleeping with her mother."

"Yes, signor."

"And Maria—let us go and see Maria."

Emotion choked me. That night, at least, Juliana was safe. It was impossible that she should think of dying, with her little girl by her side. By a miracle, the affectionate caprice of the child had saved the mother. "May God bless her!" Before looking at Maria, who was sleeping, I looked at the empty bed, that still retained the impress of the child's figure. I felt strange desires to kiss the pillow, to feel if the depression were still warm. Edith's presence embarrassed me. I turned toward Maria. I bent over her, holding my breath; I looked at her for a long time, I sought one by one the known resemblances she bore toward me, I almost counted the delicate veins that could be seen on her temple, cheek, and neck. She was sleeping on one side, her head thrown back, so as to display the whole of the neck beneath the raised chin. The teeth, fine as grains of pure rice, disclosed their whiteness through the half-closed mouth. The eyelashes, long like those of her mother, shed a shadow over the hollows of the eyes, that extended even to the cheek bones. The delicacy of a precious flower, an extreme finesse, distinguished these infantile traits, in which I felt my blood, refined, flow.

Had I ever, since the birth of these two creatures, felt for them a sensation so deep, so sweet, so sad?

I could scarcely tear myself away from there. I would have liked to sit down between the two little beds, and rest my head on the edge of the empty one, to await thus the morrow.

"Good night, Edith," I said, as I left.

My voice trembled, but it no longer trembled in the same manner.

As soon as I reached my room, I threw myself again face down on the bed. And, at last, I burst into distracted sobs.

XII.

When I awoke from the heavy and, so to speak, brute slumber that, at some moment during the night, had suddenly overwhelmed me, I could scarcely regain an exact idea of the reality.

But soon my mind, freed from the nocturnal exaltations, stood face to face with the cold, naked, implacable reality. What were my recent anguishes in comparison with the fright that invaded me then? One must live! And that had the same effect on me as if someone had presented me with a deep cup, saying: "If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must drain into this cup, even to the last drop, the blood of your heart." A repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion, assailed the inmost part of my being. And yet I must live; I must, to-day too, accept life. But, above all, I must act.

The comparison that I made, to myself, between this actual awakening and that which I had dreamed and hoped for, the evening before at the Lilacs, contributed also to revolt me. "It is impossible," I thought, "that I can accept such a situation; it is impossible that I should rise, dress myself, leave this room, see Juliana again, speak to her, continue to dissimulate before my mother; that I should wait for a suitable moment for a definite understanding between us, that in this interview I should establish the conditions of our future relations. That is impossible. But what then? Destroy with one blow, and radically, all that was suffering in me. Deliver myself—free myself. There is nothing else to be done." And, on considering the facility of the act, on imagining the rapidity of its execution, the explosion of the firearm, the immediate effect of the ball, the darkness that would follow, I felt through my entire body a singular, agonized thrill, mingled, however, with a sensation of solace, almost of sweetness. "There is nothing else to be done." And, in spite of the torment that the anxiety of knowing gave me, I thought with relief that I should have nothing to know, that that anxiety even would instantaneously cease—that, in short, all would be at an end.

I heard a knock at the door, and my brother's voice cried:

"Are you not up yet, Tullio? May I come in?"

"Come in, Federico."

He entered.

"Do you know it is after nine o'clock?"

"I fell asleep very late, and I was very tired."

"How do you feel?"

"So, so."

"Mother is up. She told me that Juliana is feeling quite well. Shall I open your window? It is a wonderful day."

He opened the window. A wave of fresh air filled the room; the curtains swelled like two sails; outside could be seen the azure of the sky.

"Do you see?"

The bright light doubtless disclosed the signs of my distress on my face; for he added:

"Were you ill, too, last night?"

"I think I was a little feverish."

Federico looked at me with his clear blue eyes; and, at that moment, it seemed to me that I bore on my soul the entire burden of future lies and dissimulations. Oh! if he had known!

But, as usual, his presence put to flight the cowardice that commenced to crush me down. A false energy, like that communicated by a drop of cordial, restored my self-command to me. I thought: "How would he have acted in my place?" My past, my education, the very essence of my nature, contradicted every probability of a similar occurrence; but, at least, this much was certain: in case of a misfortune, similar or dissimilar, he would have displayed the conduct of a strong and forgiving man, he would have heroically faced the pain, he would have preferred to sacrifice himself rather than to sacrifice the other.

"Let me feel," said he, approaching.

He touched my forehead with his open palm, and felt my pulse.

"It has left you, it seems to me. But how unsteady your pulse is!"

"Let me get up, Federico; it is late."

"To-day, after noon, I am going to the Assoro woods. If you wish to come, I will have Orlando saddled for you. Do you remember the woods? How unfortunate that Juliana is not well! Otherwise we would have taken her with us. She could see the ricks on fire."

When he mentioned Juliana it seemed as if his voice became more affectionate, softer, and, so to speak, more fraternal. Oh! if he had known!

"Good-by, Tullio. I am going to work. When will you begin to help me?"

"This very day, to-morrow, whenever you wish."