She stooped down and looked.
“It is half-past one,” she said.
Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: “I feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in my body is dulled.”
“Yes,” answered Helena, “I am afraid it will do you harm.”
“At any rate,” he smiled as if sleepily, “I have had enough. If it’s too much—what is too much?”
They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
“We are going back—we are going back!” the heart of Helena seemed to run hot, beating these words.
They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea. The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching in the sun, and sand and sea-weed breathing off their painful scent upon the heat. The sea crept smaller, further away; the sky stood still. Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful, incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other. Siegmund’s mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he had enjoyed, “Addio!” he said.
He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling peculiarly:
“It reminds me of Traviata— an ‘Addio’ at every verse-end.”
