“A madness of tender caressing seized her. She purred as a tiger might have done, while she undulated like a snake.”
Do you see the strange mystery of her smile and
the glamour of her eyes? She is a goddess, and she knows men's souls, and
their foolish unavailing passion and pain--never content with the _Is_
which they have, always regretting the _Was_ which has passed, and
building false hopes on the phantom _May be._ But you and I, my lover, my
sweet, have fathomed the riddle which is hid in the smile of our goddess,
our Sphinx--we have guessed it, and now are as high gods too. For we know
it means to live in the present, and quaff life in its full. Sweetheart,
beloved--joy and life in its full----"....
Her voice grew faint and far away, like the echo of some exquisite song,
and the lids closed over Paul's blue eyes, and he slept.
The light of all the love in the world seemed to flood the lady's face.
She bent over and kissed him, and smoothed his cheek with her velvet
cheek, she moved so that his curly lashes might touch her bare neck, and
at last she slipped from under him, and laid his head gently down upon the
pillows.
Then a madness of tender caressing seized her. She purred as a tiger might
have done, while she undulated like a snake. She touched him with her
finger-tips, she kissed his throat, his wrists, the palms of his hands,
his eyelids, his hair. Strange, subtle kisses, unlike the kisses of women.
And often, between her purrings, she murmured love-words in some strange
fierce language of her own, brushing his ears and his eyes with her lips
the while.
And through it all Paul slept on, the Eastern perfume in the air still
drugging his sense.
It was quite dark when he awoke again, and beside him--seated on the
floor, all propped with pillows, his lady reclined her head against his
shoulder. And as he looked down at her in the firelight's flickering
gleam, he saw that her wonderful eyes were wet with great glittering
tears.
"My soul, my soul!" he said tenderly, his heart wrung with emotion. "What
is it, sweetheart--why have you these tears? Oh! what have I
done--darling, my own?"
"I am weary," she said, and fell to weeping softly, and refused to be
comforted.
Paul's distress was intense--what could have happened?
