him into an
attitude of agreeable irresponsibility. He would turn child again, as he
once had been, have his mother take charge of everything; let himself be
drawn along, passive, unresisting, by the current of destiny.

But at times this resignation boiled up into hot, seething ebullitions
of angry protest, of raging passion. At night Rafael could not sleep.
The orange-trees were beginning to bloom. The blossoms, like an odorous
snow, covered the orchards and shed their perfume as far even as the
city streets. The air was heavy with fragrance. To breathe was to scent
a nosegay. Through the window-gratings under the doors, through the
walls, the virginal perfume of the vast orchards filtered--an
intoxicating breath, that Rafael, in his impassioned restlessness,
imagined as wafted from the Blue House, caressing Leonora's lovely
figure, and catching something of the divine fragrance of her redolent
beauty. And he would roll furiously between the sheets, biting the
pillow and moaning.

"Leonora! Leonora!"

One night, toward the end of April, Rafael drew back in front of the
door to his room, with the tremor he would have felt on the threshold of
a place of horror. He could not endure the thought of the night that
awaited him. The whole city seemed to have sunk into languor, in that
atmosphere so heavily charged with perfume. The lash of spring was
stirring all the impulses of life with its exciting caress, and goading
every feeling to new intensity. Not the slightest breeze was blowing.
The orchards saturated the calm atmosphere with their odorous
respiration. The lungs expanded as if there were no air, and all space
were being inhaled in each single breath. A voluptuous shudder was
stirring the countryside as it lay dozing under the light of the moon.

Hardly realizing what he was doing, Rafael went down into the street.
Soon he found himself upon the bridge, where a few strollers, hat in
hand, were breathing the night air eagerly, looking at the clusters of
broken light that the moon was scattering over the river like fragments
of a mirror.

He went on through the silent, deserted streets of the suburbs, his
footsteps echoing from the sidewalks. One row of houses lay white and
gleaming under the moon. The other was plunged in shadow. He was drawn
on and on into the mysterious silence of the fields.

His mother was asleep, he suddenly reflected. She would know nothing. He
would be free till dawn. He yielded further