He seized her wrist.
“Demetrios!” she stammered, affrighted. “I’ll not shriek! I’ll not call for aid! Only let me speak first!” She wiped the sweat from her brow. “If death—should come from you—death will be sweet—for me. I accept it; I desire it, but hearken!”
Staggering from stone to stone, she led him away in the dark night of the woods.
“Since in your hands are all the gifts of the Gods,” she continued, “the first thrill of life and the final throb of agony, let both your palms, bestowing all they hold, be opened to my eyes, Demetrios. Give me the hand of Love as well as that of Death. If you do this, I die without regret.”
There was no reply in the vague look he gave her, but she thought she read the “Yes” he had not uttered.
Transfigured a second time, she lifted towards him a new face, where desire, born again, drove, with the strength of desperation, all terror away.
“Demetrios!” she stammered, affrighted.
She spoke no more, but already between her lips that were never to close again, each breath she drew sang a soft song, as if she was beginning to feel the deepest voluptuousness of love before even being gripped in the conjunction she craved.
