giving me
the opportunity to contemplate mutely that adolescent, delicately
masculine head, so mysteriously feminine in the power of instant
seduction, so infinitely suave in its firm design, almost childlike in
the freshness of detail: altogether ravishing in the inspired strength of
the modelling. That precious head reposed in the palm of her hand; the
face was slightly flushed (with anger perhaps). She kept her eyes
obstinately fixed on the pages of a book which she was holding with her
other hand. I had the time to lay my infinite adoration at her feet
whose white insteps gleamed below the dark edge of the fur out of quilted
blue silk bedroom slippers, embroidered with small pearls. I had never
seen them before; I mean the slippers. The gleam of the insteps, too,
for that matter. I lost myself in a feeling of deep content, something
like a foretaste of a time of felicity which must be quiet or it couldn't
be eternal. I had never tasted such perfect quietness before. It was
not of this earth. I had gone far beyond. It was as if I had reached
the ultimate wisdom beyond all dreams and all passions. She was That
which is to be contemplated to all Infinity.

The perfect stillness and silence made her raise her eyes at last,
reluctantly, with a hard, defensive expression which I had never seen in
them before. And no wonder! The glance was meant for Therese and
assumed in self-defence. For some time its character did not change and
when it did it turned into a perfectly stony stare of a kind which I also
had never seen before. She had never wished so much to be left in peace.
She had never been so astonished in her life. She had arrived by the
evening express only two hours before Senor Ortega, had driven to the
house, and after having something to eat had become for the rest of the
evening the helpless prey of her sister who had fawned and scolded and
wheedled and threatened in a way that outraged all Rita's feelings.
Seizing this unexpected occasion Therese had displayed a distracting
versatility of sentiment: rapacity, virtue, piety, spite, and false
tenderness--while, characteristically enough, she unpacked the
dressing-bag, helped the sinner to get ready for bed, brushed her hair,
and finally, as a climax, kissed her hands, partly by surprise and partly
by violence. After that she had retired from the field of battle slowly,
undefeated, still defiant, firing as a last shot the impudent question:
"Tel