ance that I tried to believe in it. To fill up the gaps, we
blustered and said the needless inconsequent things people always say
when they face a long separation.

It was a little before noon. The sheeted shadows cast by the sunlight
burned and smoked in bluish waves. Between the trees of the woods
stretching beside the sea liquid flakes blinded your eyes. You'd see
annoying red spots long after you'd turned your eyes away.

I said to myself: "Only a few steps more and it will be over. One step
less and another minute will be plucked from our parting." To keep down
my emotion I hurriedly spoke of _something else_.

It must have rained in the morning. When we brushed against the
branches, the silence was broken at our feet by the limpid sound of
falling drops, the leaves wore a new skin, and the atmosphere,
impregnated with freshness, smiled the smile of nature when she wants to
dry her tears. The depths of the woods were enveloped in a blue down; a
troop of squat little fir-trees, their skirts on a level with the
ground, rang a crisp chime.

We hurried, so at one in our approaching distress that we went too fast.
The house behind the trees and bushes came into more prominent
view--shutters like eyes pitilessly closed, pointed teeth of a
gray-painted fence, threatening minutiae of a garden descending a bushy
battered skull of a slope. But after all, there can be no such thing as
separation between us two.... And for a moment, to prove the strength of
love, yes, for a moment, I was ready to run.

* * * * *

Here we are at the house. Seen at close range with its covering of red
tiles and rugged face and front fanned by two dwarf firs, the little
house in the way of our free career does not seem very imposing.

It must be. What's the use of delaying any more? Is it saddening to part
when each carries away the other? For I carry away your voice, and the
sadness of your eyes, and this kiss I give you.... I do not leave you; I
am not even distressed. Look, I am leaving you.

I took a few steps away. They rang under my eyes. I picked up every
detail of our parting and held it pressed against my heart, each grain
of red earth, each flash of mica in the road. It was not so
difficult....

Behind me I heard him walking away with a tread heavier than mine, which
seemed to set stones tumbling down a mountainside.... Two months....
What is an absence of two months? I decided not to turn around