an
illusion I create. No, do not come too close. Let me grow accustomed
first to my madness. You are happy, eh? How marvelous your eyes! They
were beautiful before when they crawled like round spiders through my
brain. But elusive. They fled from me, my madness pursuing them into
dark, empty corners.

"But now I have grown cleverer. It is necessary to be superbly clever in
order to fool one's senses like this. But take off your clothes, little
one. I want to see how clever I am. Has my phantom a body, too, or is it
only a face and an illusion of fabric I have created? Your velvet dress,
Rita, take it off. Ah, what a virginal phantom."

Rita, trembling before the gleam of the eyes that had opened to her,
listened anxiously. An ecstasy drifted like a cloud over her senses. He
had touched her. His hands had passed over her head as she had dreamed
they might. His eyes were smiling with intimacy at her face. But he had
warned her never to speak. She must not spoil it by speaking. She stood
swaying before him.

"Your velvet dress," he repeated.

Her hands reached dreamily to her body. He would see now how beautiful
she was. The men in the caravan had called her beautiful. But she had
run from them. That was long ago. Now she would show him how the skin
of her body looked, how her breasts made pretty curves, and how she had
washed herself in the perfumes he had given her.

"Ah," murmured Mallare, his eyes filling with wonder. "How incredibly
clever my madness has become! My little phantom undresses. Illusion--yet
my conveniently stupid senses are deceived. But what delicious
deception! See, her throat and breasts are white. Her body is white. I
may reach out and touch the flesh of her thighs. I am as indecent as God
for I have given her sex. But what a plagiarist I am! My phantom is as
charming and naive as an art student's copy. Still, she is not a woman
and therefore not hateful. Without life, even this may be considered
entertaining."

His hands moved cautiously over her body, his fingers slipping
experimentally over the flesh of her buttocks and thighs.

"Interesting," he smiled. "Like St. Anthony I create odalisques for my
seduction. Ah, but there is a difference. This is mine ... mine!"

His eyes gleamed with a quick frenzy at the naked figure.

"Speak. I desire you to speak, little one. If I can believe in the
illusion of flesh and eager eyes, then I can believe in the illusion of
sound. Come speak. I am at t