[Seventy]
“But now I have grown cleverer. It is necessary to be superbly clever in order to fool one’s senses like this. But take off your clothes, little one. I want to see how clever I am. Has my phantom a body, too, or is it only a face and an illusion of fabric I have created? Your velvet dress, Rita, take it off. Ah, what a virginal phantom.”
Rita, trembling before the gleam of the eyes that had opened to her, listened anxiously. An ecstasy drifted like a cloud over her senses. He had touched her. His hands had passed over her head as she had dreamed they might. His eyes were smiling with intimacy at her face. But he had warned her never to speak. She must not spoil it by speaking. She stood swaying before him.
“Your velvet dress,” he repeated.
Her hands reached dreamily to her body. He would see now how beautiful she was. The men in the caravan had called her beautiful. But she had run from them. That was long ago. Now she would show him how the skin [Seventy-one] of her body looked, how her breasts made pretty curves, and how she had washed herself in the perfumes he had given her.
“Ah,” murmured Mallare, his eyes filling with wonder. “How incredibly clever my madness has become! My little phantom undresses. Illusion—yet my conveniently stupid senses are deceived. But what delicious deception! See, her throat and breasts are white. Her body is white. I may reach out and touch the flesh of her thighs. I am as indecent as God for I have given her sex. But what a plagiarist I am! My phantom is as charming and naive as an art student’s copy. Still, she is not a woman and therefore not hateful. Without life, even this may be considered entertaining.”
His hands moved cautiously over her body, his fingers slipping experimentally over the flesh of her buttocks and thighs.
“Interesting,” he smiled. “Like St. Anthony I create odalisques for my seduction. Ah, but there is a difference. This is mine … mine!”
[Seventy-two]
His eyes gleamed with a quick frenzy at the naked figure.
“Speak. I desire you to speak, little one. If I can believe in the illusion of flesh and eager eyes, then I can believe in the illusion of sound. Come speak. I am at the mercy of my madness. If you speak to me, little one, I will understand. My stupid senses that retain their earthly logic will be ravished at the sound of your voice. But I will chuckle at my cleverness. Tell me, are you mine? Can you say, ‘I am yours’? Can you give yourself to me and deceive me with the beautiful illusion of submission? Tell me. Speak to me.”
Her eyes burning toward him, Rita nodded her head.