Slender, and so virginal, but why not somewhat languid?--her casque of
golden hair is starred sometimes with mellow sparks, and mellow is her
mauve silk dress soft in its folds.
She is all music, in the music of her movements bathed, they also soft
with pensive grace, and very slow with suppleness that undulatingly
unrolls.
An evening party. She has danced, she dances still. Men dark and fair
have come and led her off, under the chandeliers in this insipid
music,--insipid, and amusing her. Much has she danced (O all this
light!) and feels a little weary, weary. Yes, several waltzes; of her
partners one could talk, or nearly could;--but he is ugly, and his fish
eyes middle-class. The other, on her programme next, is far more
handsome, surely: his keen eyes have metallic glints, his hair is
glossy black; he is Italian, is he not, or else from Hungary?
Ah! here he comes.
Two heads incline, she takes an arm: they waltz.
This waltz, it rolls with a voluptuous rhythm, in harmony with the
rhythm of the Girl, like convoluted masses, musically vaporous and very
heavy, volutas without end and curve on curve. They dance, their curves
leave traces of caresses in the air, their undulations are a most
lascivious music. She? she is very tired, she has no strength as on her
cavalier she leans! her thought is vague, so vague along the twining
curves, vague in volutas without end, and with the contours of their
curves. These curves are turning round lasciviously; she thinks no more,
she turns, she turns, she undulates in air and in the music's kisses,
tickled by something drunken, by this air which brushes her, this
ball:--she shivers.
Now nothing more, her eyes see nothing; things that turn, vague things,
volutas vague without an end, and curves that drag her on in velvet
rhythms. But all the things around her turn too vaguely, too vaguely
cycles turn barbaric, mad; all of it turning, turning; and if she look
again she will be sure to fall!...
The waltz continues and lasciviously rolls, rolls in the dizziness of
turning things, mad cycles, and all this softness, curves that languish
fit to swoon! Feverishly and to flee the crazy dizziness of all these
vague and circumambient things, as if to save her life she keeps her
look on him.--He plunges his deep down into the great vague eyes before
him, until he sets them shuddering ... This man, his eyes are shining;
strangely beautiful, they shine with gleams fantastic, and from their
fluid comes perverted charm, burning and dominating, almost animal, and
with a glaucous glint that troubles her ...
This well-nigh bestial look upon a somewhat pensive, handsome face....
And it is she, she ... Ashamed, in spite of all her dizziness, she takes
away her eyes from him who seeks to conquer her. But all is turning, all
these things, these vague things turning, turning O too much! she shuts
her eyes to see them not, she could not open them again, the rhythms
bear her onward crossing one another, brushing some lascivious curve
again, the vagueness, O such vagueness of the crazy cycles and
lascivious curves that ravish her. Delicate titillation like a feather's
sudden touch electrifies her, half-fainting and surrendering she floats
like flotsam on his arm; this arm, that like a very soft and powerful
billow bears and cradles her; sweetly, irresistibly caresses her,
bearing her onward, circling her with a voluptuous embrace, and ... no,
no! his eyes through her closed lids she feels them, and their glaucous
flame that pierces, conquers her. This glaucous look, this virile and
determined look, it weighs upon her, haunting the soft eddyings of the
waltz,--and is not this a breath that brushes her, the stifled warmth of
a desiring breath, man's breath on her neck....
But the waltz bears her on in whirling, vague, voluptuousness.
* * * * *