She departed when Regina, mistress of the studio, arrived at eight o'clock.
Regina greeted me with a maidenly kiss on the cheek. Regina is an artist, two or three years my senior, although she appears to be younger. She has not the brains nor the curiosity about life ever to be a great painter. Her claims to the title of artist lie chiefly in a vivid, almost virile color sense, and a careful technique. Her claims to my admiration are far more numerous. Her type is oriental; coloring richly dark; magnificent, slow-burning eyes; features that would be heavy but for the life that shines through, as though they were transparent; figure a little too full, but redeemed by the firmness of unused youth; hard, not too large breasts; and beautiful hands.
I draw her to my side on the couch and begin talking about her pictures.
There is a lot to criticize in the latest.
'It is difficult to realize, looking at you,' I tell her, 'but love, even passion, is lacking in your work. How do you keep it out?'
'I don't know. I have not ever really loved.'
I had guessed that much, but I merely say:
'Why don't you?'
'I have not yet found anyone I want to fall in love with.'
That is an attitude I am not in sympathy with.
I rarely await Fate's sweet pleasure. So I tell her:
'Love is worth the loving regardless of that. The perfection is in the artist and the art itself, not in the instrument, is it not so?'
She seemed troubled about it. 'Men do not inspire me,' hesitatingly, 'My lips are loath to meet theirs as my brush is to paint them. No. They do not inspire me in the least.'
Woman always waits to be inspired! Well-Marguerite is not due for an hour and this little creature is very seductive. I take both her hands and kiss them. I love beautiful hands.
'Perhaps I can inspire you.'
She smiles uncertainly, but I draw her towards me and kiss her mouth; her eyes, and throat; then the mouth again. It grows warm, and the little nipples of her breasts harden under my fingers. I have never caressed such a sensitive skin. It burns and trembles wherever it is touched, and I am surprised that so responsive a body should be innocent of love. She does not seem to wish that it should remain innocent, tempting me with the most beautiful abandon, that I would willingly meet with all my passion; but Fate, unusually malicious, intervenes with footsteps on the stairs. It is quite certain they belong to Marguerite, whom I had forgotten. Regina hears them, too, and hot, restraining hands creep and cling round me. I cannot help feeling sorry for her. A final kiss that neither of us wants to end, and she lets me go.
Pulling a screen around the couch to give Regina time to arrange her things-for something besides, Marguerite's eyes harbor a dash of green! — I reach the door just as the knock comes. Nothing can restrain the exuberance of Marguerite's greeting. For Regina's sake, I am glad of the screen.
Marguerite is pale, more lithe, more tiger-like, than when I last saw her, and even then I would run my hands over her body and ask how she managed to hide the stripes! The yellow-green eyes are pure tiger. Her clothes are chosen with the absolute art that only the French seem to possess.
Regina, looking self-possessed enough, even to my eye, comes from behind the screen and takes Marguerite's wraps. Before we are seated others arrive.
Conversation and wine carry the evening swiftly to midnight. Marguerite, passion apparently making her impatient, whispers to me several times to leave and go home with her. I am eager enough to go, but the moods of her impatience interest me to watch. It is not kind, perhaps, but a dash of pain is good seasoning for pleasure- makes it more vital, aggressive.
A little later I get Regina into a corner, tell her I am about to leave, and ask if I may see her tomorrow, before I depart for New York. She consents, of course, her large eyes kissing me; then says impulsively:
'I wish you could stay longer. I would love to do a head of you with just the expression you had when-we were together on the couch.'
'So! I did inspire you?' I kiss the beautiful hand, hoping Marguerite does not see, and leave her.
Marguerite and I go decorously enough downstairs, but outside the air, the everlasting moon, the desertedness of the streets, are too much for us. We embrace the minute the policeman at the corner turns his back.
Marguerite and I are perfectly in accord about one important detail of love- we believe that the surroundings should harmonize with the passion; so she, quite naturally, immediately dims the lights when we enter her home, puts glowing charcoal in the incense burner, and pours liqueur- appropriately perverse little glasses; then, forgetting everything, apparently, but her need of love, sinks down beside me, where I recline on the rug and receives my kisses on her flung-back throat and face.
The foolish clothes that interrupt my lips! I unfasten them and slip them off; my own as well. The couch is more comfortable than the rug. I raise her and we stand against each other, embrace, kiss-the perfect kiss of completely meeting bodies. It creates desire too keen to be borne. Perspiration dampens her skin and mine. The perfume she has put on her body, not sweet but something insidiously acrid of eastern origin, fills my head with a hot mist.
We sway to the couch and lie for a minute, bound by our burning arms, breasts crushed together.
I release myself and begin to weave a mesh of kisses over her: the eyes, the hair, the perfect mouth, the breasts that have no shadow of fault, past the tiny coiling navel where the skin is increasingly sensitive, so quivering more with every kiss. (I always want to call a woman I love a harp.) At last the kiss that seals them all! Her body is convulsed with the intensity of the sensation.
Stressful little moans come from her throat blended with endearing names.
Her hands caress me frantically. We draw closer together. Her mouth finds my sensitive places. Incredible pleasure. Somewhere in my mind there is this thought: What a beautiful piece of work a sculptor who dared would make of this perverse intertwining of two figures in lesbic passion! Both bodies are fair enough, firm and young and supple-muscled. It must have been done by the ancients.
Cool rills of perspiration create separate tiny thrills where they traverse the skin. The quivering of her limbs, the bitter salts of her body on my tongue and lips, the sweet pressure and motion of her mouth, shake me into a scarlet blindness. The mounting sensations make me think of melodies I have heard, growing and growing to a crescendo and ending with the sudden silence that symbolizes the crisis.
We seem to flutter down from a far height and lie exquisitely quivering with the pleasure of perfect passion.
I raise myself a little and, gently now, lay little kisses along the limbs, the hips, upward over the breasts, across the throat back to the lips and grateful eyes. She is still-like a marble girl. I barely know her until she circles me with her arms and whispers, 'Lover! Sweet, little burning lover!'
I can think of no name to call her that would harmonize with the reverence that fills me for her beauty and the intensity of the pleasures we have enjoyed. I kneel beside her and kiss her hands.
It seems to be almost a law that we love those who respond to us and worship all that gives us pleasure- pleasure in its very widest sense.
Vice-! The thought amuses me. There are only vicious people.
Marguerite rises, goes and pours out something, then returning, crouches beside me, and holds up one of her little glasses to my lips with enchanting grace.
Then we go and lie on the bed, she bringing Verlaine for me to read to her, while she strokes my body, resting her cheek against one of my breasts.
If the spirit of Verlaine lurked anywhere in the room, I am certain there was approval in its nebulous heart.
And Regina on the morrow-Regina!
CHAPTER VI
