“She’s reading! How small a chamber, how poorly furnished!” A chill of disappointment struck his heart: he expected to see something so different. Where was the wild confusion of falling tresses? Where the magic of dreaming eyes, and the secret loveliness of a maiden’s deshabille? Ah, Clensy! He had yet to learn that nothing corresponds with a mortal’s conceptions of beauty, that only dreams bring happiness; that beauty like the horizon is to be imagined only, shadowed stars in water, yes, even as the stars are only the reflex of their hidden realities.
And still he stared. “Only the outline of her form under a sheet! Well! I’ll tap the casement and then she’ll turn in her bed, yet—perhaps I’d better—!” He gasped. The mosquito curtains had been swiftly pushed aside! “Heavens, she’s getting out of bed!” He gazed with burning eyes. The supreme moment had arrived. The ecstasy of his imaginings, all that mystery and loveliness which he expected to see, made his brain reel. Just for a second he closed his eyes, yes, one wondrous blink ere his eyelids parted and he gazed again. What had happened! Anguish had wrinkled his brow! He could hardly suppress a cry of horror escaping his lips—two bony, skeleton-like legs had suddenly protruded from beneath the laced edges of the counterpane! The castle of romance, all the loveliness which his imagination had conjured up, fell with a silent crash! The sight of those skinny legs, covered with shrunken flesh, looking like unfilled sausage skins, sent an icy chill to his heart. That awful sight was, to him, like the Egyptian skull of death shown, not before the festivities, but in the presence of empty dishes and wineless goblets.
“Thank God!” he murmured as he stared again—he had peeped through the wrong casement, it was upon the old negress, Claircine, that he had spied. She had leapt from her bed to put the lamp out! Clensy’s ludicrous mistake made him feel sane. The sight of Claircine’s skinny legs waving in space for one second ere they attained the perpendicular, had taught him more about the vanity of human wishes and the briefness of beauty than all the philosophies in existence.
For a moment he felt an abject fool. Then the reaction set in. His imagination began, in feverish haste, to conjure up voluptuous pictures of Sestrina’s beauty, all that she must look like when compared to poor emaciated, shrunken Claircine.
“What an ass I am,” he murmured as he began to creep in haste on his hands and knees towards the next casement. The shutters of that casement were also half opened and conveniently hidden by clusters of flowers and twining vine. Pushing the leaves aside with his hands, he peeped once again. No mistake this time! There on a couch was Sestrina’s reclining form. She was leaning back on the couch’s arm, her hair down, falling in perfect confusion over her half-clad shoulders. The delicate drapery of the couch was disturbed where one of her legs was lifted, the left knee softly couched, inclined over the right leg. The silken brown stocking, barely reaching to the knee, intensified the soft warm flush of beauty and each dimpled curve. She placed her fingers between the laced division of her unbuttoned bodice, and taking forth a tiny scented handkerchief, placed it to her face, which was half hidden by the tangled folds of her tresses, and wept!
The sight of the weeping girl filled Clensy’s heart with sorrow—and shame. He sighed, and then, for all his remorse, stared again. Sestrina had lifted her face, and, placing her hands on either cheek, was staring in tearful thought at the ceiling.
“To-morrow night and he will be here! Ah, how I long to gaze in his eyes, to hear him say those words again.”
Clensy had moved closer to the half-open shutter: his perfidious ears drank in every word that escaped Sestrina’s lips. She sighed. He saw her lips tremble as she breathed some rapturous thought. “What was she saying to herself?” Clensy leaned forward; the boards beneath his feet creaked! His figure stiffened as he stood alert, breathless in suspense. Had she heard that creak? He breathed a sigh of relief.
Sestrina must have thought it was a night bird fluttering in the boughs of the mahogany tree just beyond her window. She had arisen from her couch. Her eyes sparkled as though in the delight of some sudden happy idea. She moved towards the mirror, and, tossing her ringlets into greater confusion, gazed upon her image. One glossy ringlet strayed from its companions and curled serpentwise down over the billowy softness of her bosom, which was revealed through her unlaced bodice.
Clensy stared at her figure just as a mad sculptor might stare on his masterpiece. The charm of her deshabille, the mystery of her fluttering lingerie as the orange and lemon scented zephyrs floated through the open casement, intoxicated his senses. He stood spellbound, his eyes drinking in the delicate harmony of each outline. His soul was thrilled with the beauty and mystery of all that was left to his imagination, all that was suggested, since he could only see her pretty sandalled feet, a glimpse of the arms’ whiteness and the loveliness revealed between the luxuriance of her falling tresses. “God, how beautiful!” he murmured.