ass themselves. His dreams had been
only shabby travesties of the reality. He recalled the subtle fragrance
of her hair, the flash of her amber eyes, the sensuous delicacy and
softness of her limbs and bosom, the melodious timbre of her voice. And
he paused longer than usual as he reflected with sudden amazement that
she was his for the taking. The taking! How deliciously mysterious she
had been as she made it clear he must take her away, far away, where
nobody knew who she was, where they could be happy for ever together!
How she had played upon the strong chords of his heart as she spoke of
her despair, her loneliness, her conviction that she was destined for
ill fortune! She injected a strange strain of tragic intensity into the
voluptuous abandon of her voice. She evoked emotions tinged with a kind
of savage and primitive religious mania as she lay in his arms in the
scented darkness of that garden and whispered in her sweet twittering
tones her romantic desires. And the thought that she was even now lying
asleep in another room, the morning sun filtering through green shutters
and filling the chamber with the lambent glittering beam-shot twilight
of a submarine grotto, was like strong wine in his veins. She depended
on him, and he was almost afraid of the violence of the emotion she
stirred in him. She had touched, with the unerring instinct of a clever
woman, his imagination, his masculine pride and the profound
sentimentalism of his race towards her sex. She revealed to him a phase
in her character so inexpressibly lovely and alluring that he was in a
trance. She inspired in him visions of a future where he would always
love and she be fair. Indeed, Mr. Spokesly's romantic illusions were
founded on fact. Evanthia Solaris was possessed of a beauty and
character almost indestructible. She was preeminently fitted to survive
the innumerable casualties of modern life. She was a type that Ada
Rivers, for example, would not believe in at all, for girls like Ada
Rivers are either Christian or Hebrew, whereas Evanthia Solaris was
neither, but possessed the calculating sagacity of a pagan oracle. Such
a catastrophe as the departure of the consuls had enraged her for a
time, and then she had subsided deep into her usual mysterious mood. So
his illusions were founded on fact. She could give him everything he
dreamed of, leaving him with imperishable memories, and passing on with
unimpaired vitality to adventures beyond his hor