And, once more, she passed her bare arms around his neck, languishing, seized by desire.
"Let us stay here. Come indoors; let us lie down a little. Come!"
She tried to coax him, to entice him, seized by desire that became all the fiercer as she noticed George's resistance. She was all ardor, and her beauty was at its best, illuminated as by a torch. Her long, serpentine body trembled through her thin wrapper. Her large dark eyes shed the fascinating charm of the supreme hours of passion. She was the sovereign Sensualism repeating: "I am forever the unconquered. I am stronger than your thought. The odor of my skin has the power to dissolve a world in you."
"No, no; I do not want to," declared George, seizing her wrists with an almost brutal violence that he could not moderate.
"Ah! you don't want to?" she echoed mockingly, amused by the struggle, sure of conquering, incapable of giving way in her caprice.
He regretted his roughness. To draw her into the snare, he must be mild and coaxing, must simulate ardor and tenderness. After that, he would certainly induce her to take the nocturnal walk—the last walk. But, on the other hand, he also felt the absolute necessity of not losing that nervous momentary energy that was indispensable for the approaching action.
"Ah! So you don't want to?" she repeated, throwing her bare arms about him, gazing up at him, looking into the depths of his eyes with a species of repressed frenzy.
George permitted himself to be led into the room.
Then all the Enemy's feline lasciviousness broke loose over him whom she believed already vanquished. She let down her hair, loosened her dress, permitted her natural perfume to be exhaled like a shrub of odoriferous flowers. She seemed to realize that she must disarm this man, that she must enervate him, and that she must crush him to prevent him from becoming dangerous.
George felt he was lost. Once more the Enemy had asserted her superiority.