Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/172

 The beauty's lips shrank from the pressure of the stranger's;—it was a fruitless phantom sort of kiss. "Y yo, señor," cried the little Mexican, standing on tiptoe as she threw her arms about his neck. Everybody laughed except the recipient of the embrace. He had received an electric shock of passion which left him voiceless and speechless, and it seemed to him that his heart had ceased to beat.

Those carmine-edged lips seemed to have a special life of their own as of the gymnotus—as if crimsoned by something more lava- warm than young veins: they pressed upon his mouth with the motion of something that at once bites and sucks blood irresistibly but softly, like the great bats which absorb the life of sleepers in tropical forests;—there was something moist and cool and supple indescribable in their clinging touch, as of beautiful snaky things which, however firmly clasped, slip through the hand with boneless strength;—they could not themselves be kissed because they mesmerized and mastered the mouth presented to them;—their touch for the instant paralyzed the blood, but only to fill its motionless currents with unquenchable fires as