THE OCTOPUS A Story of California by Frank Norris ... - Pink Monkey

But Vanamee's unhappiness was too keen this night for him to
dwell long upon the vagaries of his mind. Submitting at length,
and abandoning the grave, he flung himself down in the black
shade of the pear trees, his chin in his hands, and resigned
himself finally and definitely to the inrush of recollection and
the exquisite grief of an infinite regret.
To his fancy, she came to him again. He put himself back many
years. He remembered the warm nights of July and August,
profoundly still, the sky encrusted with stars, the little
Mission garden exhaling the mingled perfumes that all through the
scorching day had been distilled under the steady blaze of a
summer's sun. He saw himself as another person, arriving at
this, their rendezvous. All day long she had been in his mind.
All day long he had looked forward to this quiet hour that
belonged to her. It was dark. He could see nothing, but, by and
by, he heard a step, a gentle rustle of the grass on the slope of
the hill pressed under an advancing foot. Then he saw the faint
gleam of pallid gold of her hair, a barely visible glow in the
starlight, and heard the murmur of her breath in the lapse of the
over-passing breeze. And then, in the midst of the gentle
perfumes of the garden, the perfumes of the magnolia flowers, of
the mignonette borders, of the crumbling walls, there expanded a
new odour, or the faint mingling of many odours, the smell of the
roses that lingered in her hair, of the lilies that exhaled from
her neck, of the heliotrope that disengaged itself from her hands
and arms, and of the hyacinths with which her little feet were
redolent, And then, suddenly, it was herself--her eyes, heavylidded,
violet blue, full of the love of him; her sweet full lips
speaking his name; her hands clasping his hands, his shoulders,
his neck--her whole dear body giving itself into his embrace; her
lips against his; her hands holding his head, drawing his face
down to hers.
Vanamee, as he remembered all this, flung out an arm with a cry
of pain, his eyes searching the gloom, all his mind in strenuous
mutiny against the triumph of Death. His glance shot swiftly out
across the night, unconsciously following the direction from
which Angele used to come to him.
"Come to me now," he exclaimed under his breath, tense and rigid
with the vast futile effort of his will. "Come to me now, now.
Don't you hear me, Angele? You must, you must come."