With her back to
the door, she was doing her hair with bare arms uplifted. One of them
gleamed pearly white; the other detached its perfect form in black
against the unshuttered, uncurtained square window-hole. She was there,
her fingers busy with her dark hair, utterly unconscious, exposed and
defenceless--and tempting.
Ricardo drew back one foot and pressed his elbows close to his sides;
his chest started heaving convulsively as if he were wrestling or
running a race; his body began to sway gently back and forth. The
self-restraint was at an end: his psychology must have its way. The
instinct for the feral spring could no longer be denied. Ravish or
kill--it was all one to him, as long as by the act he liberated the
suffering soul of savagery repressed for so long. After a quick glance
over his shoulder, which hunters of big game tell us no lion or tiger
omits to give before charging home, Ricardo charged, head down, straight
at the curtain. The stuff, tossed up violently by his rush, settled
itself with a slow, floating descent Into vertical folds, motionless,
without a shudder even, in the still, warm air.
CHAPTER TWO
The clock--which once upon a time had measured the hours of philosophic
meditation--could not have ticked away more than five seconds when Wang
materialized within the living-room. His concern primarily was with the
delayed breakfast, but at once his slanting eyes became immovably fixed
upon the unstirring curtain.
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