"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 moire. 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.