d eyes,
her parted lips, her face clothed with amorous laughter. Her masses of
yellow hair were unknotted behind, and they covered her back with the
fell of a lioness.

Bending back thus, she displayed her solid Amazonian waist and firm
bosom, where strong muscles moved under the satin texture of the skin.
A delicate line, to which the shoulder and the thigh added their slight
undulations, ran from one of her elbows to her foot, and Muffat's eyes
followed this tender profile and marked how the outlines of the fair
flesh vanished in golden gleams and how its rounded contours shone like
silk in the candlelight. He thought of his old dread of Woman, of the
Beast of the Scriptures, at once lewd and wild. Nana was all covered
with fine hair; a russet made her body velvety, while the Beast was
apparent in the almost equine development of her flanks, in the fleshy
exuberances and deep hollows of her body, which lent her sex the mystery
and suggestiveness lurking in their shadows. She was, indeed, that
Golden Creature, blind as brute force, whose very odor ruined the world.
Muffat gazed and gazed as a man possessed, till at last, when he
had shut his eyes in order to escape it, the Brute reappeared in the
darkness of the brain, larger, more terrible, more suggestive in its
attitude. Now, he understood, it would remain before his eyes, in his
very flesh, forever.

But Nana was gathering herself together. A little thrill of tenderness
seemed to have traversed her members. Her eyes were moist; she tried, as
it were, to make herself small, as though she could feel herself better
thus. Then she threw her head and bosom back and, melting, as it were,
in one great bodily caress, she rubbed her cheeks coaxingly, first
against one shoulder, then against the other. Her lustful mouth breathed
desire over her limbs. She put out her lips, kissed herself long in the
neighborhood of her armpit and laughed at the other Nana who also was
kissing herself in the mirror.

Then Muffat gave a long sigh. This solitary pleasure exasperated him.
Suddenly all his resolutions were swept away as though by a mighty wind.
In a fit of brutal passion he caught Nana to his breast and threw her
down on the carpet.

"Leave me alone!" she cried. "You're hurting me!"

He was conscious of his undoing; he recognized in her stupidity,
vileness and falsehood, and he longed to possess her, poisoned though
she was.

"Oh, you're a fool!" she said savagely when he