All I was
thinking of was that she was adorable and too lovely for words! I
cared for nothing but that sublimely aesthetic impression. It
summed up all life, all joy, all poetry! It had a divine strain.
I am certain that I was not in my right mind. I suppose I was not
quite sane. I am convinced that at that moment of the four people
in the house it was Dona Rita who upon the whole was the most sane.
She observed my face and I am sure she read there something of my
inward exaltation. She knew what to do. In the softest possible
tone and hardly above her breath she commanded: "George, come to
yourself."
Her gentleness had the effect of evening light. I was soothed.
Her confidence in her own power touched me profoundly. I suppose
my love was too great for madness to get hold of me. I can't say
that I passed to a complete calm, but I became slightly ashamed of
myself. I whispered:
"No, it was not from affection, it was for the love of you that I
brought him here. That imbecile H. was going to send him to
Tolosa."
"That Jacobin!" Dona Rita was immensely surprised, as she might
well have been. Then resigned to the incomprehensible: "Yes," she
breathed out, "what did you do with him?"
"I put him to bed in the studio.
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