f her
life, she felt her reserve melting, her mind wavering and growing
feeble. She was at that dangerously delicious point of sentiment at
which the soul receives its every impulse, its attitudes, its form from
its external surroundings as an aerial vapour from the mutations of the
atmosphere. But she checked herself before wholly giving way to it.

'Is that right now?' asked Andrea in a low, almost humble voice.

She smiled without replying. His words had given her inexpressibly keen
delight.

She began her delicate manipulations--lit the spirit-lamp under the
kettle, opened the lacquer tea-caddy and put the necessary quantity of
aromatic leaves into the tea-pot, and finally prepared two cups. Her
movements were slow and a little hesitating, as happens when the mind is
busied with other things than the occupation of the moment; her
exquisite white hands hovered over the cups with the airiness of
butterflies, and from her whole lithe form there emanated an indefinable
charm which enveloped her lover like a caress.

Seated quite close to her, gazing at her from under his half-closed
lids, Andrea drank in the subtle fascination of her presence. Neither of
them spoke. Elena, leaning back in the cushions, waited for the water to
boil, with her eyes fixed on the blue flame while she absently slipped
her rings up and down her fingers, lost in a dream apparently. But it
was no dream; it was rather a vague reminiscence, faint, confused and
evanescent. All the recollections of the love that was past rose up in
her mind, but dimly and uncertain, leaving an indistinct impression, she
hardly knew whether of pleasure or of pain. It was like the indefinable
perfume of a faded bouquet, in which each separate flower has lost the
vivacity proper to its colour and its fragrance, but from which emanates
a common perfume wherein all the diverse component elements are
indistinguishably blended. She seemed to carry in her heart the last
breath of memories already faded, the last trace of joys departed for
ever, the last tremor of a happiness that was dead--something akin to a
mist from out of which images emerge fitfully without shape or name. She
knew not, was it pleasure or pain, but by degrees this mysterious
agitation, this nameless disquiet waxed greater and filled her soul with
joy and bitterness.

She was silent--withdrawn within herself--for though her heart was full
to overflowing, her emotion was pleasurably increased by that