Yet there was no sterility in what had, primarily, animated
it; the change, it seemed, had been from use to ornament, from purpose
to a delight with no issue beyond that. Over it there hung, for Lee
Randon, the pale radiance of Cytherea.
Other visions and spectacles followed, they melted one into the next,
sensations roused by the flexible plaited thongs of desire. Lee,
stupefied in the heavy air of his own sensuality, saw the pictorial
life on the stage as an accompaniment, the visualization, of his
obsession. It was over suddenly, with a massing of form and sound; Lee
and Savina Grove were pitilessly drowned in light. Crushed together in
the crowded, slowly emptying aisle, her pliable body, under its wrap,
followed his every movement.
On the street, getting into the automobile, she directed Adamson to
drive through the park. "I don't want to go to the Malmaison," she told
Lee. Her ungloved fingers worked a link from his cuff and her hand
crept up his arm. The murmur of her voice was ceaseless, like a low
running and running over melodious keys. Then, in a tone no louder, but
changed, unexpected, she said:
"Lee, I love you."
It startled him; its effect was profound--now that it had been said he
was completely delivered to his gathering sense of the inevitable. It
secured, like a noose, all his intentions; he was neither glad nor
sorry; what was the use? His own feeling--if this were love and what
love was--eluded him.
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