“Yes, you come with me. I have money. You come with me, to my place in the mountains, to my uncle’s house. Fine house, you like it. Come with me, Allaye.”
She could not look at him.
“Why do you want me?” she said.
“Why I want you?” He gave a curious laugh, almost of ridicule. “I don’t know that. You ask me another, eh?”
She was silent, sitting looking downwards.
“I can’t, I think,” she said abstractedly, looking up at him.
He smiled, a fine, subtle smile, like a demon’s, but inexpressibly gentle. He made her shiver as if she was mesmerized. And he was reaching forward to her as a snake reaches, nor could she recoil.
“You come, Allaye,” he said softly, with his foreign intonation. “You come. You come to Italy with me. Yes?” He put his hand on her, and she started as if she had been struck. But his hands, with the soft, powerful clasp, only closed her faster.
“Yes?” he said. “Yes? All right, eh? All right!”—he had a strange mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and she was to be subjected.
“I can’t,” she moaned, trying to struggle. But she was powerless.