timent that he cherished for his cousin had been aggravated by enervating sensuous appeals. With increasing age he became even more impressionable. The unreasonable demands of his temperament made him impatient of his innate reserve and timidity.
At school, when he was in his fifteenth year, he fainted like a little girl at the too ardent perfume of the vernal gardens. The witchery of the springtime, whiffs of stormy twilights, the heavy winds that preceded rain, beating down upon the tall grass and seeming to swoon there, too intoxicated with joy to resume their flight, the atmosphere of the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox caressed him like the touch of invisible lips.
During these moments the whole of creation embraced him, and demoralized and beside himself, he burned to give it caress for caress! Why could he not clasp to him in a spasm of total possession the trees that grazed him with their branches, the hay-ricks against which he leaned, and all the perfumed and soul-stirring environment? He longed to be absorbed forever into Nature in ferment. To live for but one season, but to live the life of that season! What gentle melancholy, what a renunciation of his being, what a delicious anguish there was in this already posthumous suppleness! One day the singular timbre of an alto voice had moved him to tears. He discovered again its velvety, grave sound, sombre and rich like the mantle of night, or like an autumnal thicket, in his cousin's voice. He compared the despotism of her voice to the quality of those unusual nights when he obtained only a mocking sleep; nights propitious to nightmare, to entreaties and attempted violation—the nights of the Stone Mill.
