Conjugal Love by Alberto Moravia

waist again, began talking to her in a low voice, pointing out now one place, now another, in the plain below us, and exalting in the beauty of the night. Then, as we still conversed together, I made her turn round towards the mountain that rose behind us and pointed out the walls of the town upon its top. We had moved, as we talked, close to one of the straw-stacks: on the ground there was scattered straw where the farmer's children played in the daytime. Suddenly I embraced her, murmuring: 'Leda . . . isn't it better here than in your room?' And, as I spoke, I tried to push her gently to the ground.
    She looked at me, her shining blue eyes dilated by a sudden temptation. Then, resisting me, she said: 'No . . . the straw isn't clean. . . . Besides, it's so prickly. . . . I should ruin my frock.'
    'What does your frock matter?'
    'Your work isn't finished yet,' she said all of a sudden, with a laugh that was unexpected and full of coquettishness;' the day you've really finished it, we'll come back here, at night. ... Is that all right?'
    'No, it's not all right, there won't be any moon then. . . . Tonight.'
    Softly, and as though she were still hesitating, she said: 'Let me go, Silvio'; and then, all at once, she freed herself and ran off, down the hill, laughing. It was a fresh, childish laugh, full of an affectionate nervousness in which there seemed still to be a tremor of the temptation that I had discerned, a moment before, in her eyes; and this seemed to recompense me for the way in which she repulsed me. Perhaps it was better that it should have happened like this, I thought, as I ran after her: a gentle refusal and a gracious laugh. She was running in front of me along the path between the park and the vineyards, but I caught her up easily and took her in my arms. But now I felt that that laugh had satisfied every desire of mine; and, after kissing her, I started walking along beside her, holding her hand tightly. The moonlight threw our two shadows in front of us - separate, but with the hands joined; and this chaste return of ours now appeared to me more truly loving than the embrace which she had evaded at the threshing-floor. We walked the whole length of the drive and reached the front of the house. The electric light had come on again in the meantime, and the french window of the drawing-room had a bright and welcoming look. We went into the house, and straight upstairs. She walked in front of me up the stairs and never had she looked so beautiful to me as in that soft, graceful movement of ascent which showed off the lines of her figure. On the landing she said again, in a characteristically jocular, and at the same time sensual, manner: 'Finish your work, then . . . and we'll go together to the threshing-floor.' I kissed her hand and went to my room. Very soon afterwards I was asleep.
    Next morning, my feeling of exaltation, far from having evaporated, had perhaps reached its highest point. My wife was still asleep when I climbed into Angelo's trap and drove off with him towards the town. Angelo perhaps thought it his duty to talk to me of the state of affairs of the countryside; and I let him chatter away almost without listening to him, being absorbed in my thoughts, or rather in my feelings. The trap started off down the drive, where the first rays of the morning sun were already playing, skirted the old boundary wall and turned into the main road. The air was mild, and the soft splendour of autumn lay upon all things; I looked round over the countryside, already partly despoiled and weary-looking, and all about me, in the accurate light, so different from the devouring glare of summer, all things were clearly visible, each thing could be clearly distinguished, even to the finest detail and the subtlest shade of colour; and I could not have enough of looking. Here was a red leaf which, at a breath of wind, detached itself from the bough of a vine; there a changing network of light and faint shadow upon an old