The familiarity with which the toothless, clapping mouth smirked up at him was revolting, and still more revolting was it that he found himself smiling back at her. But it was necessary to keep on good terms with her. Was she not an accomplice?
Shuddering, he hardly knew whether from cold or excitement, he paced up and down between the pillars. It was some time before the old hag returned.
The gracious little mistress had been lying down, but begged him to wait a few minutes. She would make her toilette as quickly as possible, that was to say, not completely, because such old friends needn't stand on ceremony with each other.
Leo compressed his lips. Had she chosen to be more explicit still, he must have endured it.
In Lizzie's sanctum, two lamps with rose-coloured shades were burning. Cushions and rugs were scattered about in confusion on the couch, as if some one had a moment before disturbed them by hastily jumping up. An open book lay face downwards on the carpet. He picked it up. The title was "The Golden Road to Virtue: Experiences of a Sinner."
He began to turn over the leaves haphazard. In the highly coloured style of a tract, a newly converted sinner related her marvellous rescue from vice with a sort of coquettish fervour, which made him fancy he saw the play of uplifted eyes with which this drawing-room Magdalene sought to lure the Saviour, like another lover, into her net. But from Leo, the Goth who since his school-days had read the very worst literature, even such trash as this wrung a certain unwilling respect.
"She is doing her best according to her lights," he thought, and laid the book down with care. Yes, she was in earnest.
When she entered the room, he noticed at once the dark rims which pain had left round her eyes, and the paleness of her lips.
And yet she had never seemed to him more beautiful. She wore a careless artistic negligée of blue cashmere, bordered with creamy lace, which accumulated on her breast into a filmy cloud. Her hair, only simply dressed, curled in countless small rings over brow and cheeks, and was massed on the crown of her head into a knot of curls, which was surrounded by a double circlet of gold. Leo remembered to have seen such heads in picture-galleries, bathed in golden tints and standing out in relief against a purple half-light, as if emerging from some background of mystery.
"You have been suffering?" he exclaimed, extending both hands towards her.