In the old, old days when the Sons of Light walked upon earth with the children of men, some seraph fell for the sake of a woman like this. From the seed of that union sprang all the Henriettes.... You may know them by the tattered rags of glory that trail behind them; by the pale flickering aureole, no brighter than a will-o’-the wisp or glow-worm’s light, that hovers over the white brow....
About that brow of Henriette the willful hair rose in a wave-crest of delicate spraying blackness; curled over, shadowing the pearly forehead and blue-veined temples and the little shell-like ears, as though the waves were about to break; then rolled back and twined into a labyrinthine knot of silken coilings from which two massive curls escaped, to wander at their will. It was a face of lights and shadows; in their continual play you forgot to criticise its features. But they were eloquent, from the wide jetty arches of the eyebrows, to the silken-lashed languid eyelids, purplish-tawny as the petals of fading violets over the liquid, lustrous, changeful eyes. Eyes that mocked and laughed at you even as they wooed you; and mourned and wept for you even as they tempted and lured.
“Ah! do you indeed love me?” they seemed to say. “Is it so? Then most unhappy—poor, poor friend!—are you! Because I am of those women who are born to cause much misery. For we sting to desire without intention, and provoke to pursuit without the will. And ‘No’ is a word we have never learned to say.”
XXXIII
It seemed to Dunoisse that he had always known her, always waited for her to reveal herself just in this manner, as she rose up amidst the crisping rustle of innumerable little flounces, outstretched the white arm partly veiled by the scarf of black flowered lace—shed the brilliance of her look upon him, and smiled like a naughty angel or a sweet mischievous child, saying in a soft voice that was strange to his ears and yet divinely familiar:
“So we meet at last?”
He found no better reply than:
“You were not at home, Madame, when I paid my visit of ceremony.”
“I detest visits of ceremony,” she said, and her tone robbed the words of harshness.
“Do you then turn all unknown visitors from your doors?” Dunoisse queried. Her smile almost dazzled him as she returned: