"Forbidden fruit!" I murmured. "No, thank you." And to efface the impression of this blunder, which I had committed against my will, I hastened to improvise a satisfactory explanation of my words, hinting at the parsimony of the owner. "What would the owner say if he saw me?"
"That you are at least a knight without reproach," she replied disapprovingly, glancing at the shrubbery which effectively screened the Baron and her cousin from indiscreet observers.
When we rose from the supper-table the Baron proposed that we should accompany "the dear child" home. At the front door he offered her his arm, and then turned to me.
"Look after my wife, old man," he said, "and prove to her that you really are the perfect cavalier I know you to be." His voice was full of tender solicitude.
I felt ill at ease. As the evening was warm the Baroness, leaning lightly on me, was carrying her scarf in her hand, and from her arm, the graceful outline of which was plainly perceptible through the thin silk, emanated a magnetic current which excited in me an extraordinary sensitiveness. I imagined that I could detect, at the height of my deltoid muscle, the exact spot where the sleeve of her under-garment ended. My sensitiveness was intensified to such a degree that I could have traced the whole anatomy of that adorable arm. Her biceps, the great elevator which plays the principal part when two people embrace each other, pressed mine, flesh against flesh, in supple rhythms. In walking along, side by side, I could distinguish the curve of her hips through the skirts which brushed against my legs.
"You walk splendidly, you must be a perfect dancer," she said, as if to encourage me to break an embarrassing silence.
And after a few moments, during which she must have felt the quivering of my overstrung nerves, she asked, a little sarcastically, with the superiority of a woman of the world—
"Are you shivering?"
"Yes, I'm cold."
"Then why not put on your overcoat?"