Her eyes sparkle; her teeth, too, glisten white in the
living wound of her half-open mouth, red as her heart.
"Tell me--I am going to tell you "pants Lamuse. "I like you so
much--" He outstretches his arm towards the motionless, beloved
wayfarer.
She starts, and replies to him, "Leave me alone--you disgust me!"
The man's hand is thrown over one of her little ones. She tries to
draw it back, and shakes it to free herself. Her intensely fair hair
falls loose, flaming. He draws her to him. His head bends towards
her, and his lips are ready. His desire--the wish of all his
strength and all his life--is to caress her. He would die that he
might touch her with his lips. But she struggles, and utters a
choking cry. She is trembling, and her beautiful face is disfigured
with abhorrence.
I go up and put my hand on my friend's shoulder, but my intervention
is not needed. Lamuse recoils and growls, vanquished.
"Are you taken that way often?" cries Eudoxie.
"No!" groans the miserable man, baffled, overwhelmed, bewildered.
"Don't do it again, vous savez!" she says, and goes off panting, and
he does not even watch her go. He stands with his arms hanging,
gazing at the place whence she has gone, tormented to the quick,
torn from his dreams of her, and nothing left him to desire.
I lead him away and he comes in dumb agitation, sniffling and out of
breath, as though he had run a long way. The mass of his big head is
bent.
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