vii

He described to the wondering Patricia the Nile as he had seen it, and how it takes its rise in the mountains, and how at first the river is red and then green because of the flood of the Blue Nile, and how the flood of the White Nile comes later, so that the banks are covered and the surrounding country is inundated with rich fertilising mud. He described the desert, and repeated that short poem of Shelley's about the King Ozymandias. He told her of the sounds and colours of the East, of all those things which as a traveller he had seen and experienced. He pictured the crowds of the Bazaar, the contrasts, always keeping to familiar things of which she might have read, for the sake of reawakening past imagination and past emotion, which would be so potent in colouring her present mood. And all the time he was speaking in that slow magic-creating voice of sweetness. Monty's eyes never once left Patricia, but continued to absorb her fairness and her purity, as though he could never cease from desiring her more than anything upon earth or beyond life itself.

So given were they both to this scene that the food before them was eaten mechanically, and the wine they drank insensibly was making them more intimate and more at the mercy of the hour; and Patricia hardly knew that she was eating and drinking, so much was she in a dream. And in the dream she was haunted by the sense that she would awaken, that fierce, cruel birds of prey were tearing her heart, that never again would she know tranquillity or ease of spirit. And Monty was watching her still, with eyes that yielded nothing and took everything, while he sought only to maintain the power which he was achieving by the effect of his story upon her imagination. To Monty all the marvel of which he spoke was familiar. He was unmoved by it. Patricia's beauty, and that alone, was the cause of his unrelaxing attentiveness, the creeping white heat of his feeling, which grew each moment more fierce, more concentrated, more difficult to keep within his own power. He was moved so vehemently that his eyes were glowing. Into his face had stolen that look of greedy sensual heaviness which his passion created. His voice was lower, and the softness had given place to a dryer tone, still caressing, still full of unknown music, but deeper and less smooth. His lips were apart, showing his white teeth. His hands upon the table were rigid.

And something made Patricia look suddenly at Monty, when his expression was unguarded; and she had this clear understanding of his nature and his attitude to herself. Again she had the sensation which had come to her at night after they had parted; of blood which rose to her cheeks and shoulders, which in its recession made her body burn. It was with fear, a fear which made a shrill cry of protest, of agony, difficult to repress, that she slightly shrank. The colour faded from her cheeks. It was succeeded by deadly pallor, and a trembling such as she could never previously have known.