Chapter XVIII. The Marchesa

So Aaron dined with the Marchesa and Manfredi. He was quite startled when his hostess came in: she seemed like somebody else. She seemed like a demon, her hair on her brows, her terrible modern elegance. She wore a wonderful gown of thin blue velvet, of a lovely colour, with some kind of gauzy gold-threaded filament down the sides. It was terribly modern, short, and showed her legs and her shoulders and breast and all her beautiful white arms. Round her throat was a collar of dark-blue sapphires. Her hair was done low, almost to the brows, and heavy, like an Aubrey Beardsley drawing. She was most carefully made up--yet with that touch of exaggeration, lips slightly too red, which was quite intentional, and which frightened Aaron. He thought her wonderful, and sinister. She affected him with a touch of horror. She sat down opposite him, and her beautifully shapen legs, in frail, goldish stockings, seemed to glisten metallic naked, thrust from out of the wonderful, wonderful skin, like periwinkle-blue velvet. She had tapestry shoes, blue and gold: and almost one could see her toes: metallic naked. The gold-threaded gauze slipped at her side. Aaron could not help watching the naked-seeming arch of her foot. It was as if she were dusted with dark gold-dust upon her marvellous nudity.

She must have seen his face, seen that he was ebloui.

"You brought the flute?" she said, in that toneless, melancholy, unstriving voice of hers. Her voice alone was the same: direct and bare and quiet.

"Yes."

"Perhaps I shall sing later on, if you'll accompany me. Will you?"

"I thought you hated accompaniments."

"Oh, no--not just unison. I don't mean accompaniment. I mean unison. I don't know how it will be. But will you try?"

"Yes, I'll try."

"Manfredi is just bringing the cocktails. Do you think you'd prefer orange in yours?"

"Ill have mine as you have yours."

"I don't take orange in mine. Won't you smoke?"

The strange, naked, remote-seeming voice! And then the beautiful firm limbs thrust out in that dress, and nakedly dusky as with gold-dust. Her beautiful woman's legs, slightly glistening, duskily. His one abiding instinct was to touch them, to kiss them. He had never known a woman to exercise such power over him. It was a bare, occult force, something he could not cope with.

Manfredi came in with the little tray. He was still in uniform.

"Hello!" cried the little Italian. "Glad to see you--well, everything all right? Glad to hear it. How is the cocktail, Nan?"

"Yes," she said. "All right."

"One drop too much peach, eh?"

"No, all right."

"Ah," and the little officer seated himself, stretching his gaitered legs as if gaily. He