The Torrents of Spring eBook

And this expectation, this torture, hindered nothing.  It accompanied every action, and did not prevent anything.  It did not prevent him from dining capitally at a third inn with Emil; and only occasionally, like a brief flash of lightning, the thought shot across him, What if any one in the world knew?  This suspense did not prevent him from playing leap-frog with Emil after dinner.  The game took place on an open green lawn.  And the confusion, the stupefaction of Sanin may be imagined!  At the very moment when, accompanied by a sharp bark from Tartaglia, he was flying like a bird, with his legs outspread over Emil, who was bent double, he suddenly saw on the farthest border of the lawn two officers, in whom he recognised at once his adversary and his second, Herr von Doenhof and Herr von Richter!  Each of them had stuck an eyeglass in his eye, and was staring at him, chuckling!...  Sanin got on his feet, turned away hurriedly, put on the coat he had flung down, jerked out a word to Emil; the latter, too, put on his jacket, and they both immediately made off.

It was late when they got back to Frankfort.  ‘They’ll scold me,’ Emil said to Sanin as he said good-bye to him.  ’Well, what does it matter?  I’ve had such a splendid, splendid day!’

When he got home to his hotel, Sanin found a note there from Gemma.  She fixed a meeting with him for next day, at seven o’clock in the morning, in one of the public gardens which surround Frankfort on all sides.

How his heart throbbed!  How glad he was that he had obeyed her so unconditionally!  And, my God, what was promised ... what was not promised, by that unknown, unique, impossible, and undubitably certain morrow!

He feasted his eyes on Gemma’s note.  The long, elegant tail of the letter G, the first letter of her name, which stood at the bottom of the sheet, reminded him of her lovely fingers, her hand....  He thought that he had not once touched that hand with his lips....  ’Italian women,’ he mused, ’in spite of what’s said of them, are modest and severe....  And Gemma above all!  Queen ... goddess ... pure, virginal marble....’

‘But the time will come; and it is not far off....’  There was that night in Frankfort one happy man....  He slept; but he might have said of himself in the words of the poet: 

  ‘I sleep ... but my watchful heart sleeps not.’

And it fluttered as lightly as a butterfly flutters his wings, as he stoops over the flowers in the summer sunshine.

XXVII

At five o’clock Sanin woke up, at six he was dressed, at half-past six he was walking up and down the public garden within sight of the little arbour which Gemma had mentioned in her note.  It was a still, warm, grey morning.  It sometimes seemed as though it were beginning to rain; but the outstretched hand felt nothing, and only looking at one’s coat-sleeve, one could see traces of tiny drops like diminutive beads, but even these were soon gone.  It seemed there had never been a breath of wind in the world.  Every sound moved not, but was shed around in the stillness.  In the distance was a faint thickening of whitish mist; in the air there was a scent of mignonette and white acacia flowers.