A priceless book--rarest of the rare! You are not
acquainted with Daniel Maclisius?'

He handed Andrea the treatise: _De verberatione amatoria_. He had warmed
more and more to his subject. His bald temples were flushed, and the
veins stood out on his great forehead; every minute his mouth twitched a
little convulsively and his hands, those detestable hands, were
perpetually on the move, while his arms retailed their paralytic
immobility. The unclean beast in him appeared in all its brazen
ugliness and ferocity.

'Mumps! Mumps! are you alone?'

It was Elena's voice. She knocked softly at one of the doors.

'Mumps!'

Andrea started violently; the blood rushed to his head and drew a veil
of mist before his eyes, and there was a roar in his ears as if he were
going to be seized with vertigo. In the midst of the fever of excitement
into which he had been thrown by these books, these pictures, the
maddening discourses of his host, a furious instinct rose out of the
blind depths of his being, the same brutal impetus which he had already
experienced on the race-course after his victory over Rutolo amid the
acrid exhalations of his steaming horse. The phantasm of a crime of love
tempted and beckoned to him: to kill this man, take the woman by force,
wreak his brutal will upon her, and then kill himself. But it passed
rapidly as it had come.

'No, I am not alone,' answered the husband, without opening the door.
'In a few minutes I shall have the pleasure of bringing Count Sperelli
to you--he is here with me.'

He replaced the book in the book-case, closed the portfolio and carried
it back into the next room.

Andrea would have given all he possessed not to have to undergo the
ordeal that awaited him, and yet it attracted him strangely. Once more,
he raised his eyes to the crimson wall and the dark frame out of which
Elena's pallid face looked forth, that face with the haunting eyes and
the sibylline mouth. A penetrating and continuous fascination emanated
from that imperious image. That strange pallor dominated tragically the
whole crimson gloom of the apartment. And once again he felt that his
miserable passion was incurable.

'Will you come into the drawing-room?' asked the husband, reappearing in
the doorway perfectly calm and composed. 'Then, you will design those
clasps for me?'

'I will try,' answered Andrea.

He was quite unable to control his inward agitation. Elena looked at him
with a provocative smile.