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Page 54
'Oh, one by one you drag my vices from me. Let me own, _en bloc_, that
I have them all.'
'Then you may light a cigarette and give me one.'
He gave her a cigarette, and held a match while she lit it. Then he
lit one for himself. Her manner of smoking was leisurely, luxurious.
She inhaled the smoke, and let it escape slowly in a slender spiral.
He looked at her through the thin cloud, and his heart closed in a
convulsion. 'How big and soft and rich--how magnificent she is--like
some great splendid flower, heavy with sweetness!' he thought. He had
to breathe deep to overcome a feeling of suffocation; he was trembling
in every nerve, and he wondered if she perceived it. He divined the
smooth perfection of her body, through the supple cloth that moulded
it; he noticed vaguely that the dress she wore to-day was blue, not
black. He divined the warmth of her round white throat, the perfume of
her skin. 'And how those lips could kiss!' his imagination shouted
wildly. Again, the silence, the solitude and dimness of the forest,
their intimate seclusion there, the great trees, the sky, the bright
green cushion of moss, the few detached sounds,--bird-notes, rustling
leaves, snapping twigs,--by which the silence was intensified; again
all these lent an acuteness to his sensations. Her dark eyes were
smiling lustrously, languidly, at the smoke curling in the air before
her, as if they saw a vision in it.
'You're adorable at moments,' he said at last.
'At moments! Thank you.' She laughed.
'Oh, you can't expect me to pretend that I find you adorable always.
There are times when I could fall upon you and exterminate you.'
'Why?'
'When you passed me yesterday with a nod.'
'Twas your own fault. You didn't look amusing yesterday.'
'When you baffle my perfectly innocent desire to know whom I have the
honour of addressing.'
'Shall I summon B�zigue?' she asked, touching her bunch of charms.
He acted his despair.
'Besides, what does it matter? I know who _you_ are,' she went on.
'Let that console you.'
'Did I say you were adorable? You're hateful.'
'What's in a name? Nothing but the power to compromise. Would you have
me compromise myself more than I've done already? A woman who makes a
man's acquaintance without an introduction, and talks about love, and
smokes cigarettes, with him!' She gave a little shudder. 'How horrible
it sounds when you state it baldly.'
'One must never state things baldly. One must qualify. It's the
difference between Truth and mere Fact. Truth is Fact qualified. You
must add that the woman knew the man by common report to be of the
highest possible respectability, and that she saw for herself he was
(alas!) altogether harmless. And then you must explain that the affair
took place in the country, in the spring; and that the cigarettes were
the properest conceivable sort of cigarettes, having been rolled by
hand in England.'
'You wouldn't believe me if I said I had never done such a thing
before? They all say that, don't they?'
'Yes, they all say that. But, oddly enough, I do believe you.'
'Then you're not entirely lost to grace, not thoroughly a cynic.'
'Oh, there are _some_ good women.'
'And some good men?'
'Possibly. I've never happened to meet one.'
'The eye of the beholder!'
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