She laughed: “No! You are wrapping me up in your observations about me.”
“Why do they cover, rather than reveal you?”
“Why? Because they are illusions.”
“Oh!”
“Aren’t they romantic and inaccurate? You see, I am a girl who dances and motors and flirts.” Her smile was indulgent: as if she invited me, knowing how hard it was, to candor.
“How can you expect me to know you so swiftly?”
“Why not—swiftly?” she said.
I was aware of her as if she had been naked. I leaned forward in my chair: she lay back in hers, with an ankle poised upon the other. She knew my awareness, and was unashamed. There was naught sensual in my knowing her. She did not challenge my sense: she challenged my understanding. Her emerald dress gleamed in fluid angles over her hips, around her waist and breast. She was not naked, after all: she was clad in a cool flame aura of which her eyes were the measureless sources.
“I am going to leave you here,” I said at last. “I want to see you again. You will let me see you again?”—Again, again! oh, forever, shouted my heart. “But not again in that lewd place, with its plush music and its sticky light.”
“Where?” she asked. My violence was beyond her. She did not think of the dance as anything but pleasant. And the music was to her the usual dance music.