creates. I love you. I have dreamt of you night after night. This is my
palace. You shall see my gardens. There are fresh springs under the
shrubs; arbours for lovers; and beautiful groups of marble statuary by
Bernini. Flowers! there are too many--during the spring the place is on
fire with roses. Did I tell you that the queen is my sister? Do what you
like with me. I am made for Jupiter to kiss my feet, and for Satan to
spit in my face. Are you of any religion? I am a Papist. My father,
James II., died in France, surrounded by Jesuits. I have never felt
before as I feel now that I am near you. Oh, how I should like to pass
the evening with you, in the midst of music, both reclining on the same
cushion, under a purple awning, in a gilded gondola on the soft expanse
of ocean! Insult me, beat me, kick me, cuff me, treat me like a brute! I
adore you."

Caresses can roar. If you doubt it, observe the lion's. The woman was
horrible, and yet full of grace. The effect was tragic. First he felt
the claw, then the velvet of the paw. A feline attack, made up of
advances and retreats. There was death as well as sport in this game of
come and go. She idolized him, but arrogantly. The result was contagious
frenzy. Fatal language, at once inexpressible, violent, and sweet. The
insulter did not insult; the adorer outraged the object of adoration.
She, who buffeted, deified him. Her tones imparted to her violent yet
amorous words an indescribable Promethean grandeur. According to
AEschylus, in the orgies in honour of the great goddess the women were
smitten by this evil frenzy when they pursued the satyrs under the
stars. Such paroxysms raged in the mysterious dances in the grove of
Dodona. This woman was as if transfigured--if, indeed, we can term that
transfiguration which is the antithesis of heaven.

Her hair quivered like a mane; her robe opened and closed. The sunshine
of the blue eye mingled with the fire of the black one. She was
unearthly.

Gwynplaine, giving way, felt himself vanquished by the deep subtilty of
this attack.

"I love you!" she cried. And she bit him with a kiss.

Homeric clouds were, perhaps, about to be required to encompass
Gwynplaine and Josiana, as they did Jupiter and Juno. For Gwynplaine to
be loved by a woman who could see and who saw him, to feel on his
deformed mouth the pressure of divine lips, was exquisite and
maddening. Before this woman, full of enigmas, all else faded away in
his mind. T