whose marvellous living wall could be felt everywhere and at the same time by its contact with a coolness, no longer accidental but telluric, seeming to be radiated by all the pores of the planet, as its intolerable heat is radiated by the sun.
The driving wind from the sea in long smooth waves whipped their faces and tore from the damp sand a sparkling dust—and great sea birds with long wings seemed, by their jerky flights and sudden stops, to mark, like the sea, their ebb and flow on invisible beaches of the sky where, with outspread, motionless wings, they appeared to be stranded at times like white medusae. The wet shores were hidden by endless banks of fog which the unruffled sea, reflecting the almost horizontal rays of the sun, lighted from below with a powdery radiance, and the smooth streamers of mist could hardly be distinguished by the marvelling eye from the pools of water and the uniform expanses of wet sand—so in the morning of creation the charmed eye might have watched the unfolding of the naïve mystery of the separation of the elements.
They undressed among the graves. The sun burst through the mist, lighting the scene with its rays just as Heide in her dazzling nudity walked toward the sea with a step more mettlesome and light than that of a mare of the desert sands. In that shimmering landscape formed by those long watery reflections, in the omnipotent horizontality of those banks of mist, of those smooth flat waves, of those gliding rays of the sun, she suddenly startled the eye by the miracle of her verticality. All along the sun-devoured shore from which all shadows had fled, she set sublime reflections flowing. It seemed as though she were walking on the waters . In front of Herminien and Albert, whose eyes ran lingeringly over her strong, shadowy smooth back, over the heavy masses of her hair, and whose chests rose and fell to the marvellous slow rhythm of her legs, she stood out against the disc of the rising sun which sent streaming to her feet a carpet of liquid fire.
She raised her arms and without an effort, like a living caryatid, supported the sky on her hands. It seemed that the flow of that captivating and mysterious grace could not continue another instant without the vessels bursting in their perilously pounding hearts. Then she threw back her head, and in a frail sweet gesture raised her shoulders, and the foam that blew against her breasts and against her belly sent such an intolerably voluptuous sensation coursing through her that her lips drew back over her teeth in a passionate grimace—and to the surprise of the two spectators, at that instant there burst from this exultant figure the disordered and fragile movements of a woman.
Herminien, lingering on the shore, was transfixed by a tumultuous image. He was living over again that moment when the sun, breaking through the mists suddenly with its fiery darts, imprinted Heide in the depth of his heart—and those tragic moments when, with head thrown back between her shoulders as from too violent a shock, there escaped from her like an involuntary admission, the gestures of possession. Then her long and liquid eyes rolled back, her hands opened, each finger slowly unfolding as in the free surrender of a last resistance, her teeth glittered in the sunlight one by one in all their insolence, her lips parted like a wound henceforth impossible to conceal, her whole body trembled all through its solid thickness, and the toes rose as though all the nerves of the body were stretched to breaking point, like the rigging of a ship ravaged by an unknown wind.
They swam, the three of them, toward the high sea. Lying almost on the surface of the water, they watched the heavy waves come rolling toward them from the horizon in regular succession, and in the vertiginous tumult of their senses it seemed to them that the entire weight of the waters fell on their shoulders and must surely crush them—before forming beneath them a swell of
The driving wind from the sea in long smooth waves whipped their faces and tore from the damp sand a sparkling dust—and great sea birds with long wings seemed, by their jerky flights and sudden stops, to mark, like the sea, their ebb and flow on invisible beaches of the sky where, with outspread, motionless wings, they appeared to be stranded at times like white medusae. The wet shores were hidden by endless banks of fog which the unruffled sea, reflecting the almost horizontal rays of the sun, lighted from below with a powdery radiance, and the smooth streamers of mist could hardly be distinguished by the marvelling eye from the pools of water and the uniform expanses of wet sand—so in the morning of creation the charmed eye might have watched the unfolding of the naïve mystery of the separation of the elements.
They undressed among the graves. The sun burst through the mist, lighting the scene with its rays just as Heide in her dazzling nudity walked toward the sea with a step more mettlesome and light than that of a mare of the desert sands. In that shimmering landscape formed by those long watery reflections, in the omnipotent horizontality of those banks of mist, of those smooth flat waves, of those gliding rays of the sun, she suddenly startled the eye by the miracle of her verticality. All along the sun-devoured shore from which all shadows had fled, she set sublime reflections flowing. It seemed as though she were walking on the waters . In front of Herminien and Albert, whose eyes ran lingeringly over her strong, shadowy smooth back, over the heavy masses of her hair, and whose chests rose and fell to the marvellous slow rhythm of her legs, she stood out against the disc of the rising sun which sent streaming to her feet a carpet of liquid fire.
She raised her arms and without an effort, like a living caryatid, supported the sky on her hands. It seemed that the flow of that captivating and mysterious grace could not continue another instant without the vessels bursting in their perilously pounding hearts. Then she threw back her head, and in a frail sweet gesture raised her shoulders, and the foam that blew against her breasts and against her belly sent such an intolerably voluptuous sensation coursing through her that her lips drew back over her teeth in a passionate grimace—and to the surprise of the two spectators, at that instant there burst from this exultant figure the disordered and fragile movements of a woman.
Herminien, lingering on the shore, was transfixed by a tumultuous image. He was living over again that moment when the sun, breaking through the mists suddenly with its fiery darts, imprinted Heide in the depth of his heart—and those tragic moments when, with head thrown back between her shoulders as from too violent a shock, there escaped from her like an involuntary admission, the gestures of possession. Then her long and liquid eyes rolled back, her hands opened, each finger slowly unfolding as in the free surrender of a last resistance, her teeth glittered in the sunlight one by one in all their insolence, her lips parted like a wound henceforth impossible to conceal, her whole body trembled all through its solid thickness, and the toes rose as though all the nerves of the body were stretched to breaking point, like the rigging of a ship ravaged by an unknown wind.
They swam, the three of them, toward the high sea. Lying almost on the surface of the water, they watched the heavy waves come rolling toward them from the horizon in regular succession, and in the vertiginous tumult of their senses it seemed to them that the entire weight of the waters fell on their shoulders and must surely crush them—before forming beneath them a swell of
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