IN THE TWILIGHT

BY MARCEL PROUST

Translated by Abigail Sanfæð

Original title: AVANT LA NUIT. "Ro vue blanche," Decomber, 1893, pp. 381-385.

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"Even though I am fairly well again, you know," she said to me with intimate gentleness (as one softens by one's tone anything harsh that must be said to those one loves), "you know that I might die my day Just as I may quite well live several months. So I cannot put off any longer revealing to you something that weighs on my mind; you i will understand afterwards how painful it is for me to tell you." Her, eyes, symbolic blue flowers, lost color as if they were fading. I thought she was going to cry, but she did not. "It grieves me to destroy deliberately the hope of being respected after my death by my best friend; to tarnish, oven break, the imge that he has had of me, and upon which I have often patterned my real life, to make it more harmonious and comely. But oare for an 'artistic arrangement,1 ́(she smiled as she uttered the label with that slight ironic exaggeration she always gave to words of this sort, so rare in her conversation) "cannot check a compulsive need for honesty which forces mo to speak.

"Listen, Leslie: I simply have to tell you. But first give me my coat. It is growing a bit cool here on the terrace and the doctor has forbidden my getting up if it isn't necessary. I gave her the coat. The sun had set, and the ocean visible through the apple trees was mauve. Fragile as pale wilted wreaths (and persistent as regrets) small blue and pink clouds floated at the horizon. A somber aisle of poplars stood half in shadow, thoir tops like a rose-window; the last rays of sunset, not reaching the trunks, touched the branches above these pillars of shadow with garlands of rosy light. The breeze carried mingled scents of sea, wet leaves, and milk. Never had the Norman countryside more seductively softened the melancholy of evening, but I hardly sensed it, I was so much disturbed by the mysterious words of my friend.

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