She did not speak for a little, the wine of slumber in her brain emboldening her in the meanwhile to dare this vision with her beauty, to seek her response in its eyes. Her cheeks, her half-closed lids, were, like a baby's, flushed with sleep. Suddenly she stirred, and, smiling and murmuring, held out white arms to it:—
'The hour thou sang'st to me! Bernardo, hast thou come to make that mine?'
He stood as if stricken—white, dumfoundered. She stretched her shoulders a little, and, raising her hands, put their rosy knuckles to her eyes; and so relaxed all, and drooped.
'I was dreaming,' she murmured. 'I thought thou camest to me and said: "Beatrice, I will forego that heaven for thy sake. Give me the hour, to kiss and shame." She stole a glance at him, and dropped her clasped hands to her lap, and hung her head. 'And I answered,' she whispered, '"Take it, and make one woman happy."'
He gave a little cry. And then, suddenly, before he could move or speak, she had sat up swiftly, and whipped her arms about his neck, and pulled him to the couch beside her.
'Listen,' she urged—'nay, thou shalt not go. I hold thy weakness in a vice. Struggle, and I will tighten it. Listen, child, while I tell thee a child's tale. It is about a huntsman that followed a voice; and he pushed into a thicket, and lo! enchantment seized him beyond. And he whispered amazed, "What is this?" and the voice answered, "Love—the end to all thy hunting." O! little huntsman of Nature, be content. Thou hast traced the voice of thy long longing to its home.'
She repaid his struggles with kisses, his wild protests with honeyed words. He set his pretty teeth at her, and she pouted her mouth to them; he hurled insult at her head, and she bore the sweet ache of it for the sake of the lips that bruised. When he desisted, exhausted, she would get in her soft pleas, rebuking him with a tearful meekness:—
'Ay, scourge me, set thy teeth in me, only hate me not. Shalt find me but the tenderer, being whipped. Talk on of Nature. Is it not natural to want to be loved; and, for a woman, in a woman's way?'
'Forbear!—O, wicked! O, thou harlot!' he panted, still fighting with her.
'Lie still! So a sick infant quarrels with its food,' she answered. 'O love—dear love, will you not hear reason?'