y?" said Alvina.

Madame smiled subtly as she produced a latch-key.

"Kishwegin must open your doors for you all," she said. Then, with a
slight flourish, she presented the key to Ciccio. "I give it to him?
Yes?" she added, with her subtle, malicious smile.

Ciccio, smiling slightly, and keeping his head ducked, took the key.
Alvina looked brightly, as if bewildered, from one to another.

"Also the light!" said Madame, producing a pocket flash-light, which
she triumphantly handed to Ciccio. Alvina watched him. She noticed
how he dropped his head forward from his straight, strong shoulders,
how beautiful that was, the strong, forward-inclining nape and back
of the head. It produced a kind of dazed submission in her, the
drugged sense of unknown beauty.

"And so good-night, Allaye--bonne nuit, fille des Tawara." Madame
kissed her, and darted black, unaccountable looks at her.

Each _brave_ also kissed her hand, with a profound salute. Then the
men shook hands warmly with Ciccio, murmuring to him.

He did not put on his hat nor his coat, but ran round as he was to
the neighbouring house with her, and opened the door. She entered,
and he followed, flashing on the light. So she climbed weakly up the
dusty, drab stairs, he following. When she came to her door, she
turned and looked at him. His face was scarcely visible, it seemed,
and yet so strange and beautiful. It was the unknown beauty which
almost killed her.

"You aren't coming?" she quavered.

He gave an odd, half-gay, half-mocking twitch of his thick dark
brows, and began to laugh silently. Then he nodded again, laughing
at her boldly, carelessly, triumphantly, like the dark Southerner he
was. Her instinct was to defend herself. When suddenly she found
herself in the dark.

She gasped. And as she gasped, he quite gently put her inside her
room, and closed the door, keeping one arm round her all the time.
She felt his heavy muscular predominance. So he took her in both
arms, powerful, mysterious, horrible in the pitch dark. Yet the
sense of the unknown beauty of him weighed her down like some force.
If for one moment she could have escaped from that black spell of
his beauty, she would have been free. But she could not. He was
awful to her, shameless so that she died under his shamelessness,
his smiling, progressive shamelessness. Yet she could not see him
ugly. If only she could, for one second, have seen him ugly, he
would not have killed her and made he