d quickly, making to go past her, "but it's
white, you see, and in this dim light I----"

"A man's idea of an evening frock is always white, I suppose, or
black." She laughed a little. "I'm not coming to dinner to-night,"
she added, sitting down to the harp. "I've got a headache and thought
I might soothe it with a little music. I didn't know any one was
here. I thought I was alone."

Thus, deftly, having touched a chord of pity in me, she began to play;
her voice followed; dinner and dressing, the house-party and my
mother's guests, were all forgotten. I remember that you looked in,
your eyes touched with a suggestive and melancholy smile, and as
quickly closed the door again. But even that little warning failed to
help me. I sat down on the sofa facing her, the world forgotten. And,
as I listened to her singing and to the sweet music of the harp, the
spell, it seemed, of some ancient beauty stole upon my spirit. The
sound of her soft voice reduced my resistance to utter impotence. An
aggressive passion took its place. The desire for contact, physical
contact, became a vehement aching that I scarcely could restrain, and
my arms were hungry for her. Shame and repugnance touched me faintly
for a moment, but at once died away again. I listened and I watched.
The sensuous beauty of her figure and her movements, swathed in that
soft and clinging serge, troubled my judgment; it seemed, as I saw
her little foot upon the pedal, that I felt with joy its pressure on
my heart and life. Something gross and abandoned stirred in me; I
welcomed her easy power and delighted in it. I feasted my eyes and
ears, the blood rose feverishly to my head. She did not look at me,
yet knew that I looked at her, and how. No longer ashamed, but with a
fiery pleasure in my heart, I spoke at last. Her song had ended. She
softly brushed the strings, her eyes turned downwards.

"Marion," I said, agitation making my voice sound unfamiliar, "Marion,
dear, I am enthralled; your voice, your beauty----"

I found no other words; my voice stopped dead; I stood up, trembling
in every limb. I saw her in that instant as a maid of olden time,
singing the love-songs of some far-off day beside her native
instrument, and of a voluptuous beauty there was no withstanding. The
half-light of the dusk set her in a frame of terrible enchantment.

And as I spoke her name and rose, she also spoke my own, my Christian
name, and rose as well. I saw her move towards me. U