The Chateau d'Argol by Julien Gracq Page A

softness and of silence which would lift them lazily on its weary back with a sensation of exquisite lightness. Sometimes the crest of a wave would brusquely throw its shadow over Heide's face, sometimes the salty gleam of her wet cheek would reappear. It seemed to them that, little by little, their muscles began to partake of the dissolving power of the element that bore them along: their flesh seemed to lose some of its density and to become identified, by an obscure osmosis, with the liquid meshes that entangled them. They felt a matchless purity, an incomparable freedom being born in them—they smiled, all three of them, a smile unknown to men, as they braved the incalculable horizon.
    They were headed out to sea , and so many were the waves that had already rolled under them, so many the sudden and threatening crests they had breasted, and behind which appeared once more all the aridity of those plains, consecrated to the sun alone, that it seemed to them that the earth behind them must already have disappeared from sight, abandoning them to their enchanted migration in the midst of the waves. And with exultant cries, they encouraged each other in their flight. And it seemed to Albert that the water was actually flowing under them rushing at an unimaginable speed, and would overflow the melancholy shore, while he with his travelling companions pursued a voyage that, in his mind, increasingly took on the character of enchantment. They swam on and on at what seemed to them a constantly accelerated speed. A sharp challenge appeared in their eyes, gaining strength as they pursued this race without a goal. A few minutes more and, with the consciousness of the great distance already covered, an icy conviction became fixed in their minds. It seemed to them, to the three of them at the same moment, that now they would no longer dare to turn back, would not dare to look toward the shore, and with a glance they exchanged a pledge that bound them body and soul.
    Each of them seemed to see this mortal challenge in the others' eyes—to feel that the other two were sweeping him along by the whole force of their bodies and their wills—out to sea—further—toward unknown spaces—toward a gulf from which return would be impossible—and neither of them had any doubt as to the insidious character of this abrupt accord of their wills and of their destinies. It was no longer possible to retreat. They swam to rhythmic gasps escaping from their three chests, and with the thrilling chill of death the keen air penetrated their tired lungs. They looked lingeringly at one another. They could not detach their eyes one from the other, while lucidly their minds calculated the unretraceable distance already covered. And in a voluptuous transport, each recognized on the other faces the indubitable signs, the reflection of his own conviction, stronger with every second—now it was certain, they would no longer have strength enough to return.
    And with a holy ardour they plunged forward through the waves, and in the joy of their peremptory discovery, at the price of their common death, every instant more inevitable, each yard gained redoubled their inconceivable felicity. And, beyond hate and beyond love, they felt themselves melting, all three of them, while they glided now with furious energy into the abyss—in one single vaster body, in the light of a superhuman hope that filled their eyes, drowned in blood and brine, with the reassuring peace of tears. Their hearts leaped in their breasts, and the very limit of their strength seemed now at hand—they knew that not one of them would break the silence, would ask to turn back—their eyes shone with savage joy. Beyond life and beyond death they now looked at one another for the first time with sealed lips, and through transparent eyes plumbed the darkness of their hearts with devastating bliss—and their souls touched in an electric caress. And it seemed to them that death would reach them,