In short, I abhorred her and I idolized
her; I felt that her love was my ruin, but that to live without her was
impossible. I mounted the stairs like a flash; I spoke to none of the
servants, but, familiar with the house, opened the door of her chamber.
I found her seated calmly before her toilet-table, covered with jewels;
she held in her hand a piece of crepe which she passed gently over her
cheeks. I thought I was dreaming; it did not seem possible that this was
the woman I had left, just fifteen minutes before, overwhelmed with
grief, abased to the floor; I was as motionless as a statue. She, hearing
the door open, turned her head and smiled:
"Is it you?" she said.
She was going to the ball and was expecting my rival. As she recognized
me, she compressed her lips and frowned.
I started to leave the room. I looked at her bare neck, lithe and
perfumed, on which rested her knotted hair confined by a jeweled comb;
that neck, the seat of vital force, was blacker than Hades; two shining
tresses had fallen there and some light silvern hairs balanced above it.
Her shoulders and neck, whiter than milk, displayed a heavy growth of
down. There was in that knotted head of hair something indescribably
immodest which seemed to mock me when I thought of the disorder in which
I had seen her a moment before. I suddenly stepped up to her and struck
that neck with the back of my hand.
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