Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XV).djvu/331

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Enough

us all is peaceful and light and warm and welcoming; something droll, something of childish innocence, like a butterfly—isn't it so?—flutters about us. We nestle close to one another, we lean our heads together and both read a favourite book. I feel the delicate vein beating in thy soft forehead; I hear that thou livest, thou hearest that I am living, thy smile is born on my face before it is on thine, thou makest mute answer to my mute question, thy thoughts, my thoughts are like the two wings of one bird, lost in the infinite blue . . . the last barriers have fallen—and so soothed, so deepened is our love, so utterly has all apartness vanished that we have no need for word or look to pass between us . . . Only to breathe, to breathe together is all we want, to be together and scarcely to be conscious that we are together . . .

XI

Or last of all, there comes before me that bright September when we walked through the deserted, still flowering garden of a forsaken palace on the bank of a great river—not Russian—under the soft brilliance of the cloudless sky. Oh, how put into words what we felt! The endlessly flowing river, the

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