He felt a spasm of inexpressible
pleasure.
'Why do you shut your eyes?' she asked, not because of any suspicion in
her mind, but to lead him on to explain his emotion.
'So that I may die.'
He laid his head on her knee and remained for some minutes in that
attitude, silent and abstracted. She gently stroked his hair, his
brow--that brow behind which his infamous imagination was working.
Shadows began to fill the room, and the fragrance of the flowers and the
aromatic beverage mingled in the air; the outlines of the surrounding
objects melted into one vague form, harmonious, dim, unsubstantial.
Presently she said: 'Get up, dearest, I must go. It is getting late.'
'Stay a little longer with me,' he entreated.
He drew her over to the divan where the gold on the cushions still
gleamed through the shadows. There he suddenly clasped her head between
his hands and covered her face with fierce hot kisses. He let himself
imagine it was the other face he held, and he thought of it as sullied
by the lips of her husband; and instead of disgust, was filled with
still more savage desire of it. All the turbid sensations he had
experienced in the presence of this man now rose to the surface of his
consciousness, and with his kisses these vile things swept over the
cheeks, the brow, the hair, the throat, the lips of Maria.
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