b indolences of movement, and the hair, varying from burnt-up
black to blue, curls like a fleece adown the shoulders. She is large
and strong, a fitting mother of man, supple in the joints as the
young panther that has just bounded into the thickets; and her rich
almond eyes, dark, and moon-like in their depth of mystery, are fixed
on him. Then he awakes to the danger of the enchantment; but she
pleads that they, the last of mankind, may remain watching over each
other till the end; and seeing his eyes flash, her heart rejoices.
And out of the glare of the moon they passed beneath the sycamores.
And listening to the fierce tune of the nightingales in the dusky
daylight there, temptation hisses like a serpent; and the woman
listens, and drawing herself about the man, she says--

"'The world is ours; let us make it ours for ever; let us give birth
to a new race more great and beautiful than that which is dead. Love
me, for I am love; all the dead beauties of the race are incarnate in
me. I am the type and epitome of all. Was the Venus we saw yesterday
among the myrtles more lovely than I?'

"But he casts her from him, asking in despair (for he loves her) if
they are to renew the misery and abomination which it required all
the courage and all the wisdom of all the ages to subdue? He calls
names from love's most fearful chronicle--Cleopatra, Faustina,
Borgia. A little while and man's shameful life will no longer disturb
the silence of the heavens. But no perception of life's shame touches
the heart of the woman. 'I am love,' she cries again. 'Take me, and
make me the mother of men. In me are incarnate all the love songs of
the world. I am Beatrice; I am Juliet. I shall be all love to
you--Fair Rosamond and Queen Eleanor. I am the rose! I am the
nightingale!'

"She follows him in all depths of the forests wherever he may go. In
the white morning he finds her kneeling by him, and in blue and rose
evening he sees her whiteness crouching in the brake. He has fled to
a last retreat in the hills where he thought she could not follow,
and after a long day of travel lies down. But she comes upon him in
his first sleep, and with amorous arms uplifted, and hair shed to the
knee, throws herself upon him. It is in the soft and sensual scent of
the honeysuckle. The bright lips strive, and for an instant his soul
turns sick with famine for the face; but only for an instant, and in
a supreme revulsion of feeling he beseeches her, cryi