LOOKING AT HIM, the man asleep in the garden, Adrien says, One time I touched his face.
Madeleine, at his elbow, finds her eyes watering at the thought of this.
He offers her the nice-smelling sleeve of his shirt.
Can you see? he asks, pushing aside a branch, pushing the hair from her face.
The sight makes her suffer. There he is, her enemy, on the ground as if dead: he who has, without knowing, without even trying, replaced her in her own affections. This makes the concession all the more galling to her, this unconsciousness. Yet the beauty of him asleep, arm thrown out, mouth open—if only she knew a poem! If only her hands and fingers could speak for her, making eloquent shapes in the air as Adrien's do. It is with one of these fingers that he tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. She turns to him, full of speech. But her hands are struck dumb, and the only words that occur to her are: Orchard. Swallow. Bell.