'Let me go! Let me go!' said the girl desperately.
But he bent over her, feeling the freshness of her breath, the perfume of violet and musk, and forcibly kissed her on the lips. For one moment Lucrezia languished in his embrace, then, with a despairing cry, broke from him and fled.
IX
Having reached the nuptial apartment, he found the lamp extinguished, and Beatrice already reposing in the huge, mausoleum-like couch on a dais in the middle of the floor under a blue silk baldachin. It was adorned with silver curtains, and a coverlet, costly as the vestment of a priest, of cloth of gold and pearls.
'Bice,' he whispered caressingly; 'Bice, dost thou sleep?' and he would have saluted her, but she repulsed him.
'Bice—why is this?'
'Leave me in peace; I am fain of sleep.'
'But why, dear one, why? If thou knew'st how I adore thee!'
'Yes, yes, I know you adore us all together. Your consort, and Cecilia, and perdio! the Muscovy slave-woman, the red-haired fool whom you kissed in the obscurer angle of my wardrobe room!'