She asked as if
nothing had happened:
"What are you thinking of, amigo?"
I turned about. She was lying on her side, tranquil above the
smooth flow of time, again closely wrapped up in her fur, her head
resting on the old-gold sofa cushion bearing like everything else
in that room the decoratively enlaced letters of her monogram; her
face a little pale now, with the crimson lobe of her ear under the
tawny mist of her loose hair, the lips a little parted, and her
glance of melted sapphire level and motionless, darkened by
fatigue.
"Can I think of anything but you?" I murmured, taking a seat near
the foot of the couch. "Or rather it isn't thinking, it is more
like the consciousness of you always being present in me, complete
to the last hair, to the faintest shade of expression, and that not
only when we are apart but when we are together, alone, as close as
this. I see you now lying on this couch but that is only the
insensible phantom of the real you that is in me. And it is the
easier for me to feel this because that image which others see and
call by your name--how am I to know that it is anything else but an
enchanting mist? You have always eluded me except in one or two
moments which seem still more dream-like than the rest.
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