Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XI).djvu/140

Rh The gardener's spade suddenly scraped two paces from where they were sitting.

'Let's go home,' whispered Gemma: ' we 'll go together—will you?'

If she had said to him at that instant 'Throw yourself in the sea, will you?' he would have been flying headlong into the ocean before she had uttered the last word.

They went together out of the garden and turned homewards, not by the streets of the town, but through the outskirts.

walked along, at one time by Gemma's side, at another time a little behind her. He never took his eyes off her and never ceased smiling. She seemed to hasten seemed to linger. As a matter of fact, they both—he all pale, and she all flushed with emotion—were moving along as in a dream. What they had done together a few instants before—that surrender of each soul to another soul—was so intense, so new, and so moving; so suddenly everything in their lives had been changed and displaced that they could not recover themselves, and were only aware of a whirlwind carrying them along, like the whirlwind on that