“How strange that we should have had almost the same idea.”

She was represented as a Sphinx, after the Greek rather than the Egyptian conception.  A voluptuous, soft, round, feline body, graceful, cruel paws, a wonderful bosom as if hewn out of marble, and above it all Pilar’s regally poised head with its crown of shimmering gold hair, shrewd eyes, and blood-red vampire lips.  Between her forepaws she held a little trembling mouse in which Wilhelm’s features were cleverly indicated, and she looked down upon her victim with a smile in which there was something of a foretaste of the joy of tearing a quivering creature to pieces and sucking its warm blood.

Pilar’s drawing was a very good likeness of Wilhelm as Apollo in Olympian nudity, handsome, slender and vapid, in its resemblance to school copies of the antique.  A charming little cat with Pilar’s features was rubbing herself against his leg.  The pussy blinked up at the young Greek god with an expression of adoration, half-comic, half-touching, while he bent his head and gazed down at her thoughtfully.  Pilar took the sheet from Wilhelm’s hand and compared it with hers.

“They are exactly the same,” she said at last, “only that they are entirely the opposite of one another.  Do you really feel that I am as you have drawn me?”

“Yes,” he answered in a low voice.

“How unjust you are to yourself and to me—­I a Sphinx and you a frightened mouse!  To begin with, the Sphinx-cat did not condescend to mice, but occupied herself with men, and humbled herself before the right one when he came.”

“You are decidedly too learned for me,” laughed Wilhelm.

“No, no, seriously, it hurts me that you should regard our relations in that light.  Am I not at your feet?  Am I not your slave, your chattel, your plaything, what you will?  Have I not chosen you to be lord and master over me?  Am I a riddle to you?  My love for you is the solution of any mystery you may find in me.  Or do you accuse me of cruelty?  That could only be in fun, you bad man.”

“You take a mere playful idea too tragically, dearest Pilar.  The character of your head suggested it to me, that was all.  And then—­”

“And then?”

“Well, if you must know it, the fearless, what shall I say, Amazon-like manner in which you seized upon a man and took possession of him, body and soul.”

“Did I do that?”

He nodded.

“And you are mine?”

He nodded again.

“Tell me so, dearest, only love—­say it.”

He did not say it, but he kissed her.