Pleasure by Gabriele D'Annunzio Read Free Book Online

hands, buried his face in the fur that decorated the collar and that was therefore more scented from the contact with her skin and her hair. Then he asked:
    â€”What is it called?
    â€”It has no name.
    She sat down again on the armchair and was illuminated by the flames. She was wearing a black dress made all of lace, amid which innumerable beads sparkled, black and steel.
    The twilight was fading against the windowpanes. Andrea lit some twisted candles of an intense orange shade, on the wrought-iron candlesticks. Then he drew the fire screen in front of the fireplace.
    Both, in that interval of silence, felt perplexity within their souls. Elena did not have an exact consciousness of the moment, nor self-confidence; even if she attempted to do so, she could not grasp her sense of purpose or ascertain her intentions or find her willpower once more. In the presence of that man to whom she had once been bound by such a great passion, in that place where she had experienced the most ardent moments of her life, little by little she felt all her thoughts vacillate, dissolve, disappear. By now her spirit was about to enter that delicious state, almost, one could say, of sentimental fluidity, in which it perceives every movement, every disposition, every form of external events like ethereal vapors caused by mutations of the atmosphere. She hesitated before abandoning herself to it.
    Andrea said, softly, almost humbly:
    â€”Is that all right?
    She smiled at him without answering, because those words had given her an indefinable pleasure, almost a tremor of sweetness at the summit of her breast. She began her delicate work. She lit the lamp below the pot of water; she opened the lacquer box in which the tea was kept, and put into the porcelain pot a measured quantity of the flavor; then she prepared two cups. Her gestures were slow and slightly irresolute, as occurs with someone working with the mind turned to some other object; her white and pure hands had, in their movement, a lightness almost of butterflies, not appearing to touch things, but rather barely brushing against them; from her gestures, from her hands, from every light undulation of her body wafted some faint emanation of pleasure that soothed the senses of her lover.
    Andrea, sitting nearby, watched her with eyes slightly closed, drinking in through his pupils the voluptuous allure that radiated from her. It was as if every act became ideally tangible for him. What lover has not felt this inexpressible delight, in which it almost seems as if the sensitive power of touch becomes so refined as to be able to experience sensation without the immediate materiality of contact?
    Both were silent. Elena had leaned back on the cushions: she was waiting for the water to boil. Watching the blue flame of the lamp, she was removing her rings from her fingers and putting them on again, lost in an apparent dream. It was not a dream, but a kind of vague, wavering, confused, fleeting remembrance. All the memories of the past love affair were rising again in her mind, but without clarity: and they gave her an uncertain impression that she could not identify as pleasure or pain. It was similar to when many flowers have wilted and each has lost its particular color and scent, and a common exhalation arises from them, in which it is not possible to recognize the different elements. It appeared as if she were bearing within her the last breath of already vanished memories, the last traces of joy that has already passed, the last aftereffects of already dead happiness, something similar to a dubious vapor from which nameless, shapeless, interrupted images emerge. She could not tell if it was pain or pleasure; but slowly that mysterious agitation and that indefinable disquiet were growing and swelling her heart with sweetness and bitterness. The obscure forebodings, the dark perturbations, the secret regrets, the superstitious fears, the vanquished aspirations, the stifled pains, the