expectation,
no desire. Even when he wandered out with her on to the terrace, even
when they went down the bank and sat on a bench above the fields where
the peasants had been scything, he had still no feeling but that quiet,
dreamy adoration. The night was black and dreamy too, for the moon was
still well down behind the mountains. The little band was playing the
next waltz; but he sat, not moving, not thinking, as if all power of
action and thought had been stolen out of him. And the scent of the
flower in his coat rose, for there was no wind. Suddenly his heart
stopped beating. She had leaned against him, he felt her shoulder press
his arm, her hair touch his cheek. He closed his eyes then, and turned
his face to her. He felt her lips press his mouth with a swift, burning
kiss. He sighed, stretched out his arms. There was nothing there but
air. The rustle of her dress against the grass was all! The flower--it,
too, was gone.

X

Not one minute all that night did Anna sleep. Was it remorse that kept
her awake, or the intoxication of memory? If she felt that her kiss had
been a crime, it was not against her husband or herself, but against the
boy--the murder of illusion, of something sacred. But she could not help
feeling a delirious happiness too, and the thought of trying to annul
what she had done did not even occur to her.

He was ready, then, to give her a little love! Ever so little, compared
to hers, but still a little! There could be no other meaning to that
movement of his face with the closed eyes, as if he would nestle it down
on her breast.

Was she ashamed of her little manoeuvres of these last few days--ashamed
of having smiled at the young violinist, of that late return from the
mountain climb, of the flower she had given him, of all the conscious
siege she had laid since the evening her husband came in and sat watching
her, without knowing that she saw him? No; not really ashamed! Her
remorse rose only from the kiss. It hurt to think of that, because it
was death, the final extinction of the mother-feeling in her; the
awakening of--who knew what--in the boy! For if she was mysterious to
him, what was he not to her, with his eagerness, and his dreaminess, his
youthful warmth, his innocence! What if it had killed in him trust,
brushed off the dew, tumbled a star down? Could she forgive herself for
that? Could she bear it if she were to make him like so many other boys,
like tha