The clouding of the stuffs, like the
splendour of her skin, was something special and belonging to her alone.
Her eyes and her diamonds sparkled; the polish of her nails continued
the delicacy of the stones which loaded her fingers; the two clasps of
her tunic raised her breasts somewhat and brought them closer together,
and he in thought lost himself in the narrow interval between them
whence there fell a thread holding a plate of emeralds which could be
seen lower down beneath the violet gauze. She had as earrings two little
sapphire scales, each supporting a hollow pearl filled with liquid
scent. A little drop would fall every moment through the holes in the
pearl and moisten her naked shoulder. Matho watched it fall.

He was carried away by ungovernable curiosity; and, like a child laying
his hand upon a strange fruit, he tremblingly and lightly touched
the top of her chest with the tip of his finger: the flesh, which was
somewhat cold, yielded with an elastic resistance.

This contact, though scarcely a sensible one, shook Matho to the very
depths of his nature. An uprising of his whole being urged him towards
her. He would fain have enveloped her, absorbed her, drunk her. His
bosom was panting, his teeth were chattering.

Taking her by the wrists he drew her gently to him, and then sat down
upon a cuirass beside the palm-tree bed which was covered with a lion's
skin. She was standing. He looked up at her, holding her thus between
his knees, and repeating:

"How beautiful you are! how beautiful you are!"

His eyes, which were continually fixed upon hers, pained her; and the
uncomfortableness, the repugnance increased in so acute a fashion that
Salammbo put a constraint upon herself not to cry out. The thought of
Schahabarim came back to her, and she resigned herself.

Matho still kept her little hands in his own; and from time to time,
in spite of the priest's command, she turned away her face and tried to
thrust him off by jerking her arms. He opened his nostrils the better
to breathe in the perfume which exhaled from her person. It was a fresh,
indefinable emanation, which nevertheless made him dizzy, like the smoke
from a perfuming-pan. She smelt of honey, pepper, incense, roses, with
another odour still.

But how was she thus with him in his tent, and at his disposal? Some one
no doubt had urged her. She had not come for the zaimph. His arms fell,
and he bent his head whelmed in sudden reverie.

To sof