Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/176

 He moved away, turning to the table, looking down on the prints that were spread out there.

"Yes, yes, I could show you then my power." His voice vibrated with sudden excitement. "You think me absurd. Yes, yes, you do. You do. Don't deny it now. As though I couldn't perceive it. Do you think me so stupid? Absurd, with my ridiculous hair, my ugly body. Oh! I know! You can't hide it from me. You laugh like the rest. Secretly, you laugh. You are smiling behind your hand. Well, smile then, but how foolish of you to be so taken in by physical appearances. Do you know my power? Do you know what I could do to you now by merely clapping my hands?

"If my fingers were at your throat, at your breast, and you could not move but must wait my wish, my plan for you, would you think me then so absurd, my figure, my hair, ridiculous? You would be as though in the hands of a god. I should be as a god to you to do with you what I wished....

"What is there that is so beautiful that I, ugly as I am, cannot do as I wish with it? This" Suddenly he took up the "Orvieto" and held it forward under the candle-light. "This is one of the most beautiful things of its kind that man has ever made, and I—am I not one of the ugliest human beings at whom men laugh?—well, would you see my power over it? I have it in my hands. It