mained just
himself: neither more nor less. And there was a finality about it, which
was at once maddening and fascinating. Aaron felt angry, as if he were
half insulted by the other man's placing the gift of friendship or
connection so quietly back in the giver's hands. Lilly would receive no
gift of friendship in equality. Neither would he violently refuse it. He
let it lie unmarked. And yet at the same time Aaron knew that he could
depend on the other man for help, nay, almost for life itself--so long
as it entailed no breaking of the intrinsic isolation of Lilly's
soul. But this condition was also hateful. And there was also a great
fascination in it.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE MARCHESA

So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi. He was quite startled
when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. She seemed like
a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. She wore
a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind
of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. It was terribly modern,
short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her
beautiful white arms. Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue
sapphires. Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like
an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. She was most carefully made up--yet with
that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite
intentional, and which frightened Aaron. He thought her wonderful, and
sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite
him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings,
seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful,
wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes,
blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The
gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching
the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted with
dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.

She must have seen his face, seen that he was _ebloui_.

"You brought the flute?" she said, in that toneless, melancholy,
unstriving voice of hers. Her voice alone was the same: direct and bare
and quiet.

"Yes."

"Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you'll accompany me. Will you?"

"I thought you hated accompaniments."

"Oh, no--not just unison. I don't mean accompaniment. I mean unison. I
don't know how it will be. But will you try?"

"Yes, I'