By the flickering light of the candle, that waved back and forth as a breath of air came in through the door, Renaud watched the familiar vision reappear.
Zinzara swayed this way and that as she unfastened, one after another, her waist, her skirts—and took them off, bending gracefully forward and backward, raising her arms above her head or lowering them to her ankles. And now you would have said it was a bronze statue, glistening in the half-darkness. Renaud knew that figure well, from having seen it one day in the bright sunlight, and so many, many times since then, in his imagination.
The necklace tinkled upon her swelling breasts; several large rings were around her ankles, and upon her brow, the crown from which the trinkets hung.
She turned and twisted gracefully about, her dark skin gleaming like a mirror.
“You see,” said she, “Zinzara gives herself, no man takes her, romi. The wild girl belongs to no one but herself. And even now I could, if I chose, nail you where you stand, forever!”
As she spoke, she threw down upon her clothes a keen-edged stiletto that had gleamed for an instant in her hand.
“Come!” said she.
They lay, side by side, on the floor of that hovel, upon the crackling reeds.
At that moment, he looked into the depths of her eyes, and he saw there vague things by which he had already on several occasions been profoundly alarmed. The gitana’s hidden purpose, as to which she herself had no clear idea, flickered uncertainly in her glance, making its presence felt, but giving no hint by which it could be divined.
Her smile, which was ordinarily visible only at the corner of her mouth, had spread, more unfathomable than ever, over her whole face, which wore an expression of triumphant mockery. More mysterious she appeared and more desirable. If Renaud had been familiar with the carved stone animals that lie sleeping in the Egyptian desert, he would have recognized their expression, an expression that words cannot describe, upon the speaking face that gazed at him and called him.