The Garden of Survival | Page 7

sensual caress that, I admit, bewildered both my will and judgment. She
was very close and her fragrance came on me with her breath, like the
perfume of the summer garden. I touched the material carelessly; it was
of softest smooth white serge. It seemed I touched herself that lay
beneath it. And at that touch some fire of lightning ran through every
vein.
"How stupid of me," I said quickly, making to go past her, "but it's
white, you see, and in this dim light I----"
"A man's idea of an evening frock is always white, I suppose, or black."
She laughed a little. "I'm not coming to dinner to-night," she added,
sitting down to the harp. "I've got a headache and thought I might
soothe it with a little music. I didn't know any one was here. I thought I
was alone."
Thus, deftly, having touched a chord of pity in me, she began to play;
her voice followed; dinner and dressing, the house-party and my
mother's guests, were all forgotten. I remember that you looked in, your
eyes touched with a suggestive and melancholy smile, and as quickly
closed the door again. But even that little warning failed to help me. I
sat down on the sofa facing her, the world forgotten. And, as I listened
to her singing and to the sweet music of the harp, the spell, it seemed,
of some ancient beauty stole upon my spirit. The sound of her soft
voice reduced my resistance to utter impotence. An aggressive passion
took its place. The desire for contact, physical contact, became a
vehement aching that I scarcely could restrain, and my arms were
hungry for her. Shame and repugnance touched me faintly for a
moment, but at once died away again. I listened and I watched. The
sensuous beauty of her figure and her movements, swathed in that soft
and clinging serge, troubled my judgment; it seemed, as I saw her little
foot upon the pedal, that I felt with joy its pressure on my heart and life.
Something gross and abandoned stirred in me; I welcomed her easy

power and delighted in it. I feasted my eyes and ears, the blood rose
feverishly to my head. She did not look at me, yet knew that I looked at
her, and how. No longer ashamed, but with a fiery pleasure in my heart,
I spoke at last. Her song had ended. She softly brushed the strings, her
eyes turned downwards.
"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 joy
and pain. For one second I felt that she repelled me, that she resented
my action and my words. Yes, for one brief second she stood there, like
an angel set in judgment over me, and the next we had come together

again, softly, gently, happily; I heard that strange, deep sigh, already
mentioned, half of satisfaction, half, it seemed, of pain,