you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had
surprised her thus. But Albine repeated, 'No, she is not like me, she is
very plain.'

Serge said nothing. He looked at the girl and then at Albine, as though
he were comparing them one with the other. Albine pulled up one of her
sleeves, as if to show that her arm was whiter than that of the pictured
girl. Then they subsided into silence again, and gazed at the painting;
and for a moment Albine's large blue eyes turned to Serge's grey ones,
which were glowing.

'You have got all the room painted again, then?' she cried, as she
sprang from the table. 'These people look as though they were all coming
to life again.'

They began to laugh, but there was a nervous ring about their merriment
as they glanced at the nude and frisking cupids which started to
life again on all the panels. They no longer took those survivals of
voluptuous eighteenth century art to represent mere children at play.
They were disturbed by the sight of them, and as Albine felt Serge's hot
breath on her neck she started and left his side to seat herself on the
sofa. 'They frighten me,' she murmured. 'The men are like robbers,
and the women, with their dying eyes, look like people who are being
murdered.'

Serge sat down in a chair, a little distance away, and began to talk of
other matters. But they remained uneasy. They seemed to think that all
those painted figures were gazing at them. It was as if the trooping
cupids were springing out of the panelling, casting the flowers they
held around them, and threatening to bind them together with the blue
ribbons which already enchained two lovers in one corner of the ceiling.
And the whole story of the nymph and her faun lover, from his first peep
at her to his triumph among the flowers, seemed to burst into warm life.
Were all those lovers, all those impudent shameless cupids about to step
down from their panels and crowd around them? They already seemed to
hear their panting sighs, and to feel their breath filling the spacious
room with the perfume of voluptuousness.

'It's quite suffocating, isn't it?' sighed Albine. 'In spite of every
airing I have given it, the room has always seemed close to me!

'The other night,' said Serge, 'I was awakened by such a penetrating
perfume, that I called out to you, thinking you had come into the room.
It was just like the soft warmth of your hair when you have decked it
with heliotropes.... In the earlier times i