I found a poem the other day, a
love-song of De Musset. Do you know that you lived in this very city
years ago, Fatalite, and he saw you and loved you? How else could he
have written this?
"_Avez-vous vu en Barcelone,
Une Andalouse au sein bruni,
Pale comme un beau soir d'Automne,
C'est ma maitresse, ma lionne,
La Marchesa d'Amagui._"
Arithelli listened, her eyes dilating, and a little flame of colour
creeping up under the magnolia skin that made her likeness to the woman
of the poem. Her awakening senses thrilled to the eager voice, the
riotous challenging words:
"_J'ai fait bien de chansons pour elle_."
He broke off abruptly and continued: "I hate all the rest of it. The
woman isn't like you, further on, and the lover laughs at his own
passion, and the whole thing jars. That first verse haunted me for
days after I'd read it."--The sentence was finished by a convulsive fit
of coughing, which he vainly tried to stifle.
"This is the first time to-day," he gasped, between the paroxysms.
"I'm quite well really.
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