She perched herself on the arm of a chair, so that the golden, after-glow fell athwart her. I watched her, thinking how little she had changed from the old Fiesole. She was still tantalizing, as mischievous as a school-girl; once she had fiddled with boys’ heartstrings, now she took her pastime in breaking men’s.
She was a creature of vivid mysteries, alternately wooing and repelling. She could beckon you on with passionate white arms and thrust you from her with hands of ice. She came out of nowhere like a wild thing from a wood. You looked up and saw her—she vanished. She courted capture and invited pursuit; but you knew that, though you caught her, you would never tame her.
She had plucked a deep-cupped daffodil from a vase on the table. She was bending over it with a tender air of contemplation. She held the long slim stalk low down in her dainty, long, slim fingers. The golden dust of the petals seemed the reflection of the golden glint that was in her hair. The stalk was the color of her eyes. Her tempestuous loveliness—made to lure and torture men, to fill them with cravings which she could not satisfy—was resting now.
She looked up at me with calculated suddenness. She read admiration in my eyes.
“You find me pretty nice, don’t you, Dante?”
“I’m not disguising it, am I?”
“I thought, maybe, you were cross with me about Brookins. We never quite approved of one another, did we, Dante? You thought and still think me a coquette.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“With some people, but not with you. I only played with the Bantam to draw you out of your shell.”
“Really?”