And again he reassured her: “You are my mate.”
“But is this what they felt for me, those other men? I hated them for it. I blamed them.”
“No.” He deprived her lips of his that his eyes might blaze the indignant denial into her eyes. “Their passion was lust. Yours is the fragrance of the rose—the pollen of your love. Do not fear that I could misunderstand.”
“Fear? If God made the rose, why fear?” she half-sobbed. “If it is not lust for you to love me, give me back your lips. Oh, kiss me, John. Oh, love me. I belong.”
CHAPTER XVII
“I cannot tell more to-night. I cannot make it snappy. I cannot go on.”
The tortured protest of the spirit-girl Dolores was as the breath of a blower to her demon audience. It fanned the tinder of their evil imaginations and inflamed their desires for intimate details.
A clamor of profanity arose as the marble-pale, but fervid face which had wrought such grief among men lowered to the shield of hands that looked too weak to have torn to bits a strong man’s honor. The shudder of crucified modesty caused the jewel-like lights that adorned her hair, her throat, her breast to wink, as from carnal thoughts “indestructible” as their source of life.
For several nights the first Royal Entertainer had held her place at the monk-table’s head by virtue of a two-fold charm; had dazzled their eyes with her beauty and the illusion of her gorgeous apparel, while enslaving their attention with the finished style of her tale. Now that she had reached what might be considered a low spot of intensity, however, her sense of the artistic had failed her and them. She had fallen from the superiority of her infernal state; and backslid, as it were, into the slough of an almost human self-consciousness. When their most venomous hisses did not lift the sin-dark head from the board, they turned as one to him who had arranged the little inside entertainment. Interest of another kind stirred in them at the look of him.
Exasperation had lifted the King from his chair. He stood at the table’s foot, glaring down at the proselyte who had dared to arouse, then deny his emotions. A glow surrounded him, outlining his superb proportions against the black velvet hangings. From his eyes—nearer green than gray at the moment—poured a baleful light. His features worked from mental lasciviousness.