wer
girls offering her baskets of roses.

'Do you remember--do you remember?'

'Yes.'

'And that evening--quite at the beginning, when I brought in such a mass
of flowers.--You were alone--beside the window--reading. You remember?'

'Yes--yes.'

'I came in. You scarcely turned your head and you spoke quite harshly to
me--what was the matter?--I do not know. I laid the flowers upon the
tables and waited. You spoke of trivial things at first, with
indifference--without interest. I thought to myself bitterly--"She is
tired of me already--she does not love me." But the scent of the flowers
was very strong--the room was full of it. I can see you now--how you
suddenly seized the whole mass in your two hands and buried your face in
it, drinking in the perfume. When you lifted it again all the blood
seemed to have left your face, and your eyes were swimming in a kind of
ecstasy----'

'Go on--go on!' said Elena feverishly, as she leaned over the parapet
fascinated by the rushing waters below.

'Afterwards, you remember on the sofa--I smothered you in flowers--your
face, your bosom, your shoulders, and you raised yourself out of them
every moment to offer me your lips, your throat, your half closed lids.
And between your skin and my lips I felt the rose leaves soft and cool.
I kissed your throat and a shiver ran through you, and you put out your
hands to keep me away.--Oh, then--your head was sunk in the cushions,
your breast hidden under the roses, your arms bare to the elbow--nothing
in this world could be so dear and sweet as the little tremor of your
white hands upon my temples--do you remember?'

'Yes--go on.'

He went on with ever-increasing fervour. Carried away by his own
eloquence, he was hardly conscious of what he said. Elena, her back
turned to the light, leaned nearer and nearer to him. Under them the
river flowed cold and silent; long slender rushes, like strands of hair,
bent with every gust and trailed on the surface of the water.

He had ceased to speak, but they were gazing into one another's eyes and
their ears were filled with a low continuous murmur which seemed to
carry away part of their life's being--as if something sonorous had
escaped from their very brains and were spreading away in waves of sound
till it filled the whole air about them.

Elena rose from her stooping posture. 'Let us go on,' she said. 'I am so
thirsty--where can we get some water?' They crossed the bridge to a
little inn