habit or in that wrapper folded tightly round her and open low to a point in front.  Because of the absence of all trimming round the neck and from the deep view of her bare arms in the wide sleeve this garment seemed to be put directly on her skin and gave one the impression of one’s nearness to her body which would have been troubling but for the perfect unconsciousness of her manner.  That day she carried no barbarous arrow in her hair.  It was parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied with a black ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead or temple.  This smoothness added to the many varieties of her expression also that of child-like innocence.

Great progress in our intimacy brought about unconsciously by our enthusiastic interest in the matter of our discourse and, in the moments of silence, by the sympathetic current of our thoughts.  And this rapidly growing familiarity (truly, she had a terrible gift for it) had all the varieties of earnestness:  serious, excited, ardent, and even gay.  She laughed in contralto; but her laugh was never very long; and when it had ceased, the silence of the room with the light dying in all its many windows seemed to lie about me warmed by its vibration.

As I was preparing to take my leave after a longish pause into which we had fallen as into a vague dream, she came out of it with a start and a quiet sigh.  She said, “I had forgotten myself.”  I took her hand and was raising it naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly the arm to which it belonged become insensible, passive, like a stuffed limb, and the whole woman go inanimate all over!  Brusquely I dropped the hand before it reached my lips; and it was so lifeless that it fell heavily on to the divan.

I remained standing before her.  She raised to me not her eyes but her whole face, inquisitively—­perhaps in appeal.

“No!  This isn’t good enough for me,” I said.

The last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they were precious enamel in that shadowy head which in its immobility suggested a creation of a distant past:  immortal art, not transient life.  Her voice had a profound quietness.  She excused herself.

“It’s only habit—­or instinct—­or what you like.  I have had to practise that in self-defence lest I should be tempted sometimes to cut the arm off.”

I remembered the way she had abandoned this very arm and hand to the white-haired ruffian.  It rendered me gloomy and idiotically obstinate.

“Very ingenious.  But this sort of thing is of no use to me,” I declared.

“Make it up,” suggested her mysterious voice, while her shadowy figure remained unmoved, indifferent amongst the cushions.

I didn’t stir either.  I refused in the same low tone.

“No.  Not before you give it to me yourself some day.”

“Yes—­some day,” she repeated in a breath in which there was no irony but rather hesitation, reluctance what did I know?