Then she felt his fingers go softly round her arm.
"Sit down by me," he said, drawing her delicately downward by the arm he held. Her dignity kept her from resisting. She was drawn down among the deep cushions beside him. The warmth that his great body had left on them struck her bare arms and shoulders, giving her a feeling of repulsion. As she sat there, armed within against him, she could not escape from breathing his breath, his face was so close to hers. Its odour of mingled wines, cognac, cigarette smoke, sickened her. The strong, sooty smell of cloth from the arm against her own added a new pang, for this smell of London cloth, which was so distinct to her foreign sense, had been once associated with the fascination of love.
Now he leaned his face forward and looked into her eyes, and she noticed with that inward shrivelling how strange his were—so much paler than they used to be—curiously glassy—the pupils mere specks of black in the centre of the greenish iris.
"What's the use of posing to me?" he said, with a sort of blandness.
"Posing to you?"
"Yes—quite so. Doing the 'chastest icicle on Dian's Temple.' You forget—don't you? I've seen the hidden fire."
Sophy said nothing. The blood started to her cheek again as under a whip.
He moistened his lips in that slow way, and smiled.
"Haven't I? Eh?"
She turned him a very quiet, haughty profile.