ection that this was impossible made me get up at
last with a sigh of deep grief at the end of the dream. But I got up
without despair. She didn't murmur, she didn't stir. There was
something august in the stillness of the room. It was a strange peace
which she shared with me in this unexpected shelter full of disorder in
its neglected splendour. What troubled me was the sudden, as it were
material, consciousness of time passing as water flows. It seemed to me
that it was only the tenacity of my sentiment that held that woman's
body, extended and tranquil above the flood. But when I ventured at last
to look at her face I saw her flushed, her teeth clenched--it was
visible--her nostrils dilated, and in her narrow, level-glancing eyes a
look of inward and frightened ecstasy. The edges of the fur coat had
fallen open and I was moved to turn away. I had the same impression as
on the evening we parted that something had happened which I did not
understand; only this time I had not touched her at all. I really didn't
understand. At the slightest whisper I would now have gone out without a
murmur, as though that emotion had given her the right to be obeyed. But
there was no whisper; and for a long time I stood leaning on my arm,
looking into the fire and feeling distinctly between the four walls of
that locked room the unchecked time flow past our two stranded
personalities.

And suddenly she spoke. She spoke in that voice that was so profoundly
moving without ever being sad, a little wistful perhaps and always the
supreme expression of her grace. She asked as if nothing had happened:

"What are you thinking of, _amigo_?"

I turned about. She was lying on her side, tranquil above the smooth
flow of time, again closely wrapped up in her fur, her head resting on
the old-gold sofa cushion bearing like everything else in that room the
decoratively enlaced letters of her monogram; her face a little pale now,
with the crimson lobe of her ear under the tawny mist of her loose hair,
the lips a little parted, and her glance of melted sapphire level and
motionless, darkened by fatigue.

"Can I think of anything but you?" I murmured, taking a seat near the
foot of the couch. "Or rather it isn't thinking, it is more like the
consciousness of you always being present in me, complete to the last
hair, to the faintest shade of expression, and that not only when we are
apart but when we are together, alone, as close as this