CHAPTER I

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Over the Adriatic swept the humid and oppressive heat of the east wind. The sky was cloudy, nebulous, white as milk. The sea, having lost all motion and all materiality, seemed mingled with the diffused vapors in the distance--very white, without respiration. A white sail, a single white sail--so rare a thing in the Adriatic--was visible yonder, near the Diomede Islands, motionless, indefinitely lengthened by the reflection of the water, the visible centre of this inert world, which gradually seemed to evaporate.

Seated in a tired attitude, on the parapet of the loggia, Hippolyte fixed her gaze on the sail, her eyes magnetized by its whiteness. A little bent, her whole figure relaxed, she had an air of stupor, almost of hebetude, which revealed the momentary eclipse of her inner life. And this absence of expressive energy accentuated all that there was commonplace and irregular in her features, rendered heavier the lower part of her face. Even the mouth--that elastic and sinuous mouth--whose contact had so often communicated to George a sort of instinctive and indefinable terror, seemed now despoiled of its bewitching charm, and reduced to the physical appearance of a vulgar organ which only recalled kisses as a mechanical art deprived of all beauty.

George considered with attention and clear-sightedness the naked reality of this unconscious woman, with whose life he had, up to now, so furiously joined his own life. And he thought: "In an instant, all has ended. The flame is extinguished. I love her no longer! ... How has that happened so quickly?" What he felt was not only the disgust following abuse, that carnal aversion which follows prolonged pleasures, but a more profound detachment which seemed to him definite and irremediable. "How could anyone still love, after having seen what I see?" The usual phenomenon took place in him; with its first perceptions, real, isolated and exaggerated, he composed by association an inner phantom which gave to his nerves a much stronger impulse than the present object. Henceforth, what he saw in Hippolyte's person with inconceivable intensity was the sexual being exclusively, the inferior being deprived of all spiritual value, a simple instrument of pleasure and of luxury, the instrument of ruin and of death. And he had a horror of his father! But, after all, was he not doing the same thing? And the recollection of the concubine crossed his mind; he found in his memory certain details of the horrible altercation with that odious man, in the country house, in front of the open window through which he had heard the cries of the little bastards, in front of the large table littered with papers on which he had perceived the disk of glass and the obscene vignette.

"How heavy the air is!" murmured Hippolyte, removing her gaze from the white sail, which still remained motionless in the infinite. "Does it not oppress you, too?"

She rose, took a few listless steps towards a willow seat, provided with cushions, and sank down as if dead with fatigue, sighing deeply, throwing back her head, half-closing her eyes, the curved lids of which trembled. She had suddenly become very beautiful again. Her beauty was rekindled, unexpectedly, like a torch.

"When will the mistral blow? Look at that sail. It is always in the same place. It's the first white sail since my arrival. It seems as if I dream it is there."

As George remained silent, she added:

"Have you seen any others?"

"No; it's the first I have seen, too!"

"From where did it come?"

"From Gargano, perhaps."

"And where is it going?"

"Perhaps to Ortona."

"What is her cargo?"

"Perhaps oranges."

She began to laugh; and even her laugh, enveloping her as if in a live wave of freshness, transfigured her anew.

"Look, look!" she cried, raising herself on one elbow and pointing to the horizon of the sea, where it appeared as if a curtain had fallen. "Five other sails, over there in file. Do you see them?"

"Yes, I see them."

"There are five?"

"Yes, five."

"More, more! Over there! Look, another file! What a number there are!"

The sails appeared at the extreme limit of the sea, red like little flames, motionless.

"The wind is changing. I feel that the wind is changing. Look there, how the water is beginning to ripple."

A sudden breeze assailed the tufts of the acacias, which, bending on their stems, shed several blossoms like dead butterflies. Then, before those light remains could touch the earth, all was at peace again. During the interval of silence, the low murmur of the water as it was dashed against the beach could be heard; and this murmur died away with the flight of the wave as it passed along the shore, and then ceased.

"Did you hear it?"

She had risen and leaned on the parapet, listening intently, in the attitude of a musician who is tuning his instrument.

"Here is the wave coming back," she cried again, pointing to the mobile rippling of the water, upon which the shower was advancing; and she waited, animated by impatience, ready to fill her lungs with the wind.

After a few seconds the acacias, assailed, once more bent on their stems, causing a shower of other flowers. And the strong gust bore as far as the loggia the saline odor mingled with the perfume of the withered bunches. A silvery sound, of singular harmony, filled with its kettledrum vibrations the concavity of the little bay between the two promontories.

"Do you hear?" said Hippolyte, in a low but exulting voice as if this music had penetrated as far as her soul, and that all her life were

## participating in the vicissitudes of the things around her.

George followed all her actions, all her gestures, all her movements, every word, with such intense attention that the rest was for him as if it had never existed. The preceding image no longer coincided with the actual appearance, though it still dominated his mind to the extent of maintaining the profound sensation of the moral detachment, and of preventing him from replacing this woman in her first frame, of not reestablishing her in her original state of being, of not reintegrating her. But from every one of these actions, from every one of these gestures, from every one of these movements, from every one of these words, emanated an inevitable power. All these physical manifestations seemed to compose a web which trapped him, and held him prisoner. It seemed that between this woman and himself there was formed a sort of corporeal bond, a sort of organic dependence, a correspondence by virtue of which the slightest gesture provoked in him an involuntary sensual modification, and that henceforth he would no longer be capable of living and feeling independently. How could he reconcile this evident affinity with the occult hate which he had just discovered at the bottom of his heart?

Hippolyte, through a spontaneous curiosity, through an instinctive desire to multiply her sensations and to make the surrounding neighborhood part of herself, was still absorbed in the spectacle. The facility she exhibited in entering into communication with every form of natural life and of finding a world of analogies between human expressions and the appearances of the most diverse things; this rapid and diffuse sympathy, which attached her not only to objects with which she was in daily contact, but also to foreign objects; that sort of imitative virtue which often permitted her to express by a single sign the distinctive character of an animate or inanimate being, of talking to the domestic animals and understanding their language--all these mimic faculties properly concurred in rendering more visible, in George's eyes, the predominance in her of the inferior life.

"What's that?" she said, surprised at noticing a sudden, mysterious rumbling. "Didn't you hear it?"

It was like a dull blow, which other blows followed in rapid succession--blows so strange that it could not be discerned if they came from near or far, in the air that became more and more limpid.

"Didn't you hear that?"

"It may be distant thunder."

"Oh, no!"

"What, then?"

They looked around them, perplexed. Every moment the sea was changing color in proportion as the sky became clearer; here and there it took on that shade of indefinable green, like unripe flax, as when the sun's oblique rays pass through the diaphanous stems in an April twilight.

"Ah! it's the sail flapping--that white sail, yonder," cried Hippolyte, happy at being the first to discover the mystery. "Look. She's caught the wind. She's off."

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