Bella Donna eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 668 pages of information about Bella Donna.

Bella Donna eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 668 pages of information about Bella Donna.

“Where shall I put them?” he asked, gravely.

She pointed to the side of the tent which was nearest to the smaller tent.

“Against the silk, two or three cushions.  Then I can lean back.  That will do.”

She unbuttoned her fur jacket.

“Help me!” she said.

He drew it gently off.  She sat down, and pulled off her gloves.  She arranged the cushions with care behind her back.  Her manner was that of a woman who meant to stay where she was for a long time.  She was listening intently to hear the music again, but her face did not show that she was making any effort.  Her self was restored to her, and her self was a woman who in a certain world, a world where women crudely, and sometimes quite openly, battle with other women for men, had for a long time resolutely, successfully, even cruelly, held her own.

Baroudi watched her with serious eyes.  He picked up his pipe and let himself down on his haunches close to where she was leaning against her cushions.  The night wind blew more strongly.  There was no sound from the other tent.  When Mrs. Armine knew that the wind must drown that strange, frail music, even if the hidden player still carelessly made it, she said, with a sort of brutality: 

“And if my husband comes back to camp before my return there?”

“He will not.”

“We can’t know.”

“The dromedary will take you there in fifteen minutes.”

“He may be there now.  If he is there?”

“Do you wish him to be there?”

He had penetrated her thought, gone down to her desire.  That sound of music, that little cry of some desert lute plucked by demure fingers, perhaps stained with the henna, the colour of joy, had rendered her reckless.  At that moment she longed for a crisis.  And yet, at his question, something within her recoiled.  Could she be afraid of Nigel?  Could she cower before his goodness when it realized her evil?  Marriage had surely subtly changed her, giving back to her desires, prejudices, even pruderies of feeling that she had thought she had got rid of for ever long ago.  Some spectral instincts of the “straight” woman still feebly strove, it seemed, to lift their bowed heads within her.

“Things can’t go on like this,” she said.  “I don’t know what I wish.  But I am not going to allow myself to be treated as you think you can treat me.  Do you know that in Europe men have ruined themselves for me—­ruined themselves?”

“You liked that!” he intercepted, with a smile of understanding.  “You liked that very much.  But I should never do that.”

He shook his head.

“I would give you many things, but I am not one of those what the Englishman calls ‘dam fools.’”

The practical side of his character, thus suddenly displayed, was like a cool hand laid upon her.  It was like a medicine to her fever.  It seemed for a moment to dominate a raging disease—­the disease of her desire for him—­which created, to be its perpetual companion, a furious jealousy involving her whole body, her whole spirit.

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Project Gutenberg
Bella Donna from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.