ook against a vase, and played the
tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily. But as he played, he felt that
he did not cast the spell over her. There was no connection. She was in
some mysterious way withstanding him. She was withstanding him, and
his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire. She was, in some
indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly risen from
the ashes of its nest in flames.

He realised that she did not want him to play. She did not want him to
look at the songs. So he put the book away, and turned round, rather
baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was
withstanding him. He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was
her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it.
He could not understand it. What was it in her face that puzzled him?
Almost angered him? But she could not rob him of his male power, she
could not divest him of his concentrated force.

"Won't you take off your coat?" she said, looking at him with strange,
large dark eyes. A strange woman, he could not understand her. Yet, as
he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at
his limbs, his physical body. And this went against him, he did not want
it. Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful
white arms, her whole soft white body. And such desire he would not
contradict nor allow to be contradicted. It was his will also. Her whole
soft white body--to possess it in its entirety, its fulness.

"What have you to do this morning?" she asked him.

"Nothing," he said. "Have you?" He lifted his head and looked at her.

"Nothing at all," said she.

And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he
looked at her.

"Shall we be lovers?" he said.

She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck
heavily, but he did not relax.

"Shall we be lovers?" came his voice once more, with the faintest touch
of irony.

Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it.

"Yes," said she, still not looking at him. "If you wish."

"I do wish," he said. And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her
face, and she sat with her face averted.

"Now?" he said. "And where?"

Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself.
Then she looked at him--a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible,
and which he did not like.

"You don't want emotions? You don't want