of its thoughts. He said things to me then that
made me sink back against the cushions of my chair faint with
rapture--things that his lips will never repeat to me, that my ears will
never hear.

'In front of us, the cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun,
stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour
of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was
an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor--a diffusion of angelic
light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters.
And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the soul of
the declining day.

'Oh sweet and tranquil death of September!

'Another month ended, lost, dropped away into the abyss of
Time--Farewell!

'I have lived more in this last fortnight than in fourteen years; and
not one of my long weeks of unhappiness has ever equalled in sharpness
of torture this one short week of passion. My heart aches, my head
swims; in the depths of my being, I feel a something obscure and
burning--a something that has suddenly awakened in me like a latent
disease, and now begins to creep through my blood and into my soul in
spite of myself, baffling every remedy--desire.

'It fills me with shame and horror as at some dishonour, some sacrilege
or outrage; it fills me with wild and desperate terror as at some
treacherous enemy who will make use of secret paths to enter the citadel
which are unknown to myself.

'And here I sit in the night watches, and while I write these pages,
with all the feverish ardour that lovers put into their love-letters, I
cease to listen to the gentle breathing of my child. She sleeps in
peace; she little knows how far away from her her mother's spirit is!

'_October 1st._--I see much in him that I did not observe before. When
he speaks, I cannot take my eyes off his mouth--the play of his lips and
their colouring occupies my attention more than the sound or the sense
of his words.

'_October 2nd._--To-day is Saturday--just a week since the
never-to-be-forgotten day, the 25th of September.

'By some strange chance, although I no longer avoid being alone with
him--for I am anxious now for the dread and heroical moment--by some
strange chance, that moment has not yet occurred.

'Francesca has always been with me the whole day long. This morning we
had a ride along the road to Rovigliano, and we spent the best part of
the afternoon at the piano. She made me