He realised that she did not want him to play. She did not want him to look at the songs. So he put the book away, and turned round, rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was withstanding him. He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it. He could not understand it. What was it in her face that puzzled him? Almost angered him? But she could not rob him of his male power, she could not divest him of his concentrated force.
“Won't you take off your coat?” she said, looking at him with strange, large dark eyes. A strange woman, he could not understand her. Yet, as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at his limbs, his physical body. And this went against him, he did not want it. Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body. And such desire he would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted. It was his will also. Her whole soft white body—to possess it in its entirety, its fulness.
“What have you to do this morning?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “Have you?” He lifted his head and looked at her.
“Nothing at all,” said she.
And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he looked at her.
“Shall we be lovers?” he said.
She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck heavily, but he did not relax.
“Shall we be lovers?” came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony.
Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it.