Page:Magician 1908.djvu/155

 hated herself. Like a bird at its last gasp, beating frantically against the bars of a cage, Margaret made a desperate effort to regain her freedom. She sprang up.

“Let me go from here. I wish I’d never seen you. I don’t know what you’ve done with me.”

“Go by all means if you choose,” he answered.

He opened the door, so that she might see he used no compulsion, and stood lazily at the threshold with a hateful smile. There was something terrible in his excessive bulk. Rolls of fat descended from his chin and concealed his neck entirely. His cheeks were huge, and the lack of beard added to the hideous nakedness of his face. Margaret stopped as she passed him, horribly repelled yet horribly fascinated. She had an immense desire that he should take her again in his arms and press her lips with that red voluptuous mouth. It was as though fiends of hell were taking revenge upon her loveliness by inspiring in her a passion for this monstrous creature. She trembled with the intensity of her desire. His eyes were hard and cruel.

“Go,” he said.

She bent her head and fled from before him. To get home she passed through the gardens of the Luxembourg, but her legs failed her, and in exhaustion she sank upon a bench. The day was sultry. She tried to collect herself. Margaret knew well the part in which she sat, for in the enthusiastic days that seemed so long gone by she was accustomed to come there for the sake of an exquisite tree upon which her eyes now rested. It had all the slim delicacy of a Japanese print. The leaves