He answered me gravely in a deep voice, enumerating the reasons on my fingers as he held them in his own.
“I love you because you are beautiful and terrible. Because you have that white, subtle face, and that mouth that is like a greedy rose, and those long, cruel eyes ... I love you because you are different from all others, better or worse than all, more intelligent and more passionate than all.” He was silent for a moment. “And also because you have forced me to love you.”
Yes. I had forced him to love me. And now he was what I wanted him to be—an instrument ready to my hand: a fierce and docile instrument of death, a submissive and murderous weapon.
June crept warmly up from the south, and murmured of blue waters and dancing sunlight.
“Mura, let us go to Venice,” said Paul Kamarowsky one afternoon as he sat beside me on the balcony; “let us pass these last three months of waiting at the Lido. If needs be, I can take you back to Russia later on, to complete the few formalities that must precede our marriage.”
“To Venice?” I said faintly.
Paul Kamarowsky smiled.
“Ti guardo e palpito, Venezia mia,“
he quoted under his breath. And bending forward, he kissed my trembling lips.