with my head
resting, with a weight I felt must be crushing, on Dona Rita's shoulder
which yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. A faint scent of
violets filled the tragic emptiness of my head and it seemed impossible
to me that I should not cry from sheer weakness. But I remained
dry-eyed. I only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught her
round the waist clinging to her not from any intention but purely by
instinct. All that time she hadn't stirred. There was only the slight
movement of her breathing that showed her to be alive; and with closed
eyes I imagined her to be lost in thought, removed by an incredible
meditation while I clung to her, to an immense distance from the earth.
The distance must have been immense because the silence was so perfect,
the feeling as if of eternal stillness. I had a distinct impression of
being in contact with an infinity that had the slightest possible rise
and fall, was pervaded by a warm, delicate scent of violets and through
which came a hand from somewhere to rest lightly on my head. Presently
my ear caught the faint and regular pulsation of her heart, firm and
quick, infinitely touching in its persistent mystery, disclosing itself
into my very ear--and my felicity became complete.

It was a dreamlike state combined with a dreamlike sense of insecurity.
Then in that warm and scented infinity, or eternity, in which I rested
lost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardly
audible, and fit to strike terror into the heart, ringing of a bell. At
this sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the world close
about me; the world of darkened walls, of very deep grey dusk against the
panes, and I asked in a pained voice:

"Why did you ring, Rita?"

There was a bell rope within reach of her hand. I had not felt her move,
but she said very low:

"I rang for the lights."

"You didn't want the lights."

"It was time," she whispered secretly.

Somewhere within the house a door slammed. I got away from her feeling
small and weak as if the best part of me had been torn away and
irretrievably lost. Rose must have been somewhere near the door.

"It's abominable," I murmured to the still, idol-like shadow on the
couch.

The answer was a hurried, nervous whisper: "I tell you it was time. I
rang because I had no strength to push you away."

I suffered a moment of giddiness before the door opened, light streamed
in, and Rose ente