"Marion," I said, agitation making my voice sound unfamiliar, "Marion,
dear, I am enthralled; your voice, your beauty----"

I found no other words; my voice stopped dead; I stood up, trembling
in every limb. I saw her in that instant as a maid of olden time,
singing the love-songs of some far-off day beside her native
instrument, and of a voluptuous beauty there was no withstanding. The
half-light of the dusk set her in a frame of terrible enchantment.

And as I spoke her name and rose, she also spoke my own, my Christian
name, and rose as well. I saw her move towards me. Upon her face, in
her eyes and on her lips, was a smile of joy I had never seen before,
though a smile of conquest, and of something more besides that I must
call truly by its rightful name, a smile of lust. God! those
movements beneath the clinging dress that fell in lines of beauty to
her feet! Those little feet that stepped upon my heart, upon my very
soul. . . . For a moment I loathed myself. The next, as she touched me
and my arms took her with rough strength against my breast, my
repugnance vanished, and I was utterly undone. I believed I loved.
That which was gross in me, leaping like fire to claim her glorious
beauty, met and merged with that similar, devouring flame in her; but
in the merging seemed cunningly transformed into the call of soul to
soul: I forgot the pity. . . . I kissed her, holding her to me so
fiercely that she scarcely moved. I said a thousand things. I know
not what I said. I loved.

Then, suddenly, she seemed to free herself; she drew away; she looked
at me, standing a moment just beyond my reach, a strange smile on her
lips and in her darkened eyes a nameless expression that held both