She is strange this morning. (I see her so clearly—although there is no sunlight and the room is dim—crouching at her window seat, her hands hooked in the wire, looking out at the dripping trees with restless intensity, turning back sometimes to stare at me, disengaging her hand from the netting and lifting it slowly with a wan look to clench the tips of her fingers between her teeth.) What is the cause of it? The frustration of her plans? More than that, I think: some profound unease. There is a fierce, musing vulnerability about her, like a cat cornered by vicious schoolboys. She picks at the hem of her skirt, her fingers soiled by charcoal.
“So we are not going walking?” she says.
“No. We can’t walk in the rain.”
“Are you glad?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t looking forward to it.”
“What do you look forward to?”
“To you. Seeing you, touching you, loving you.”
She watches the soft, rabid, shameless yearning of my eyes; never have I felt such desire for her.
“And nothing else?”
“No, nothing else.”
“But you are afraid to make it perfect.”
“Perhaps. It is enough for me as it is. I don’t want it to—”
“What?” She watches me fiercely. “To corrupt others, is that it?” I lower my eyes, unable to withstand her scorn. “Fool. You don’t deserve what I’ve given you. You have no taste for excellence.”
There is a cry above. She raises her head, her eyes clenching slightly with suspense.
“Oh, God. He’s starting again. He screamed all night. Who is it that screams like that above me?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Davis, I think.”
“Why don’t you stop him? You don’t know how terrible it is, all night. Why don’t you do something for him? Why don’t you kill him?”
“We are supposed to cure, not to kill.”
“Are you?” She stares at me with bitter, mocking merriment. “Do you think you can cure me? Do you? Poor frightened Vincent. Can you cure this fire?” She doubles her fists and presses them against her belly, leaning forward and rocking her body, as if in agony. “Do you know what you have to cure? Do you know what I want?” I cannot meet the burning challenge of her eyes. “I want to leave the mark of my desire on every living creature in the world. That disgusts you, doesn’t it? Poor, honorable Vincent.”
“I don’t have any right to be disgusted,” I say.
“But you think it sinful, don’t you? Terrible. If I were a poet I would want to do it with words, and if I were Caesar I would do it with a sword. But I am Lilith, so I must do it with my body. How it frightens you! Wretched, righteous fool!”
She leaps up from the window seat and prowls across the room, stopping in front of the bookcase, on which stands the broken skull. She has inserted the red rosette into its eyesocket, like a scarlet poppy. She stands staring up at it, clawing her hair with her curled fingers. I move toward her and lay my hands lightly on her shoulders, saying, “Lilith, I only want to—”
She starts violently and shrinks away from me, turning her head swiftly, her hair falling across her frightened eyes.
“Don’t! Don’t touch me! Your hands are so cold.”
“Cold?” I lower my hands and look at them perplexedly. She stares, wide-eyed, through her scattered hair.
“Yes, cold. They feel so . . . dead. There was a rose in one of them, and all the petals blew away, like little flames. Why are your hands dead like that?”
I stand in silent confusion, feeling a chill of dread. She turns away from me, pacing across the room toward the window and then returning restlessly to the bookcase, staring up at the festooned skull.
“Why did you steal my doll?” she asks suddenly, turning to face me with blazing eyes.
“I didn’t steal it,” I murmur, my face burning.
She watches me for a moment with brooding scorn. “You’re lying to me. And you say you love me. How can there be any love or trust between us, when you lie to me and steal from me?”
“I stole it because I love you,” I say humbly, dropping my head. “I wanted to have something that would remind me of you.”
She stands in silence; with bowed head I feel her eyes upon me.
“Have I shown you my paintbox?” she asks suddenly.
“Your paintbox? Yes, I’ve seen it lots of times.”
“No, I mean my new one.”
She moves to her desk and, opening the drawer, takes out a wooden box and brings it to me. It is made of cedar, or some rose-colored wood, its cover beautifully inlaid with chips of ivory, ebony and mother-of-pearl, in an intricate geometrical design. It has also four little feet of polished ivory and a tiny latch and hinges of brass. I turn it over in my hands, admiring it.
“Don’t you think it is beautiful?”
“Yes.”
“Open it.”
I do so. Inside, it is divided into narrow compartments for her paints and brushes, the thin dividing strips of satin-smooth wood obviously fitted and glued by hand. There is a folded sheet of notepaper lying inside.
“You may read it, if you like.”
I open the sheet of paper and read, in an ornate and devoutly executed hand:
This is the birthday present I made for you, but I have not yet had the courage to give it to you. If you will do me the honor of using it when you paint, then I will be able to feel that I have contributed in some small way to the beauty that you bring into the world. I have not seen you now for eight days.W. E.
I feel a slight pang of indignation as I read the words.
“He asked Miss Brice to bring it up to me yesterday. Don’t you think it’s rather touching?”
“Yes.”
She takes the box from me and lays her hand upon it musingly. “He has nice hands. Not cold, like yours. I had no idea he could make anything so lovely with them.”
“Yes, it’s beautifully made.” My indignation grows more intense, to something approaching active jealousy.
“I think it’s quite touching. He’s a sweet boy, really. I’ve been rather cruel to him.”
“I thought you considered him a fool,” I say, a little shamed by the strenuousness of my own voice. My breath is suddenly cool and shrill in my nostrils.
“Perhaps. But I don’t think he will steal his gifts back from me, or lie to me. I think he is capable of trust. And I think he would follow wherever I asked him to.”
“Yes, I suppose he would,” I say bitterly. “I suppose there are many who would, if you don’t care what kind of fools you have following you.”
“I think he may be braver, and less of a fool, than you imagine,” she says with gentle, infuriating calm. “I would like to know. I want you to take us walking together tomorrow.”
My indignation breaks suddenly into a hot flood of outrage.
“And do you think I will? Do you really think I will?”
“Yes, I think so.”
I stare at her savagely, my eyes feeling hot and heavy with rage.
“No, I won’t. What do you think I am? Don’t you think I have any pride at all?”
“I want your pride to be in me,” she says, becoming suddenly more gentle. She inclines her head a little in a supplicating way, her eyes softening. “I want you to trust me, Vincent.”
I feel my resolution ebbing slowly before her beautiful wild eyes.
“I can’t tomorrow, anyway. I have to work on Third Floor. I’ll be busy all day.”
“Oh, that’s a pity. I’ll have to ask someone else to take us, then. Perhaps Mr. Mandel will.”
She moves toward me slowly, her hands a little outstretched to clasp my head, her faint bitter-clean verbena scent enfolding me with fragile tyranny, like the climate of a dream. She takes my temples in her finger tips, bringing by forehead gently to rest against her breast. Whitest, most exquisite of all havens. Oh, white rose of the world!
“Vincent, I would cherish you so if you could learn to trust me,” she whispers. “You would never have known such joy.”
“I’ll have to see,” I murmur. “I don’t know. You’ll have to wait a day or two.”
“No, no.” I wave him back into his chair and sit beside him in another, listening. The late-afternoon sunlight enters through the western windows, casting soft yellow trapezoids on the papered walls; one of them is broken across Warren’s chair. His hand lies in the light, and I study it while I listen to the music: the dark hairs blazing in the soft brilliance, the long fine fingers with their bitten nails and ragged cuticles. I imagine it touching her intimately, trembling. He will have just such a look as he has now—drowsy, avid, the absurdly doglike look of human ecstasy. The music rises in a grievous frenzy, then, after a stark pause, reaches its climax in three shuddering chords, like the stifled, sobbing moan she makes in love; and I see her clenching his hair to bring his mouth to hers.
“Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that a perfectly beautiful thing?”
“Yes.”
I sit with closed eyes while he rises to switch off the phonograph, an attitude that he generously mistakes for reverence, for he says quietly in a moment, “It’s almost more than one can bear. It almost seems like treason of a kind to come back from that world at all, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Idiotic man! I watch him settle himself in the chair beside me, tugging his trouser cloth from the crests of his knees and turning to face me with shy awkwardness.
“I wonder if Miss Arthur would like to hear them? I asked her once, you know.”
“I don’t know, Warren.”
“I thought you might bring her over some afternoon. Perhaps you could ask her again; she may have forgotten about it. I’m sure she’d like to hear them.” One hand goes nervously to his mouth; he retracts it instantly and couples his finger tips together to conceal them. His eyes plead with me. I stare into them and say with sudden deliberate malice, disguised by a solicitous hesitancy in my voice. “Why, I’m not really sure she would, Warren. I did mention it to her again, just this afternoon, and I’m afraid she seemed quite uninterested.”
His face falls into a still, startled expression of dismay. “Oh. Oh, you did?” He lifts his joined hands and stares at them for a moment. “Oh, I didn’t realize that. You saw her today?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if she mentioned the present I sent her? I asked Miss Brice to take it up to her yesterday. A paintbox I made her in the shop. I don’t suppose she said anything about it?”
“Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.”
“She did? Was she—did she seem pleased with it?”
“Why, that’s rather hard to say.” I drop my eyes evasively with just the proper expression of regret. “She showed it to me. I thought it was beautifully made.”
“Thank you. Yes, I spent quite a lot of time on it. I found a book, you know, that tells how to do that kind of work. I thought she’d like to have something like that.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t think she seemed . . . particularly glad to get it?”
“I couldn’t honestly say she did, Warren. I was a little surprised at her indifference; it’s such a beautiful piece of work.”
“Yes.” He moves his head and stares miserably at the sunlit windows, an expression of harrowed resolution growing in his eyes. “I wonder if you would do something for me, Mr. Bruce?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It would mean a great deal to me.”
“I’ll be happy to do anything I can.”
“I wonder if you would tell me, absolutely frankly, what you consider her opinion of me to be?”
I pause effectively, spreading my fingers and studying them with quite spurious compassion.
“Well, you know, she’s a very—well, a very capricious person, Warren. I’m sure you realize that.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think she’s a type of person who could ever feel very sincere or lasting affection for anyone. Something she said today made me particularly aware of that.”
“What did she say?”
“Well, there’s no point in repeating it; it would only be . . . painful. But you can take my word for it that she’s a shallow and very cruel person, really.”
“I’d like to know exactly what she said. It’s very important to me.” He stares at me with a severe, carefully controlled look of desolate but dignified appeal. “You promised to be completely frank.”
I look levelly into his eyes, capitulating at last, with simulated misgiving, to his demand: “She said, ‘Just because I’ve tried to be nice to the poor fool once or twice, he seems to think he has some claim on me. He’s a stupid, fawning creature, and I despise him.’”
I watch the sudden, swiftly deepening pallor of his face and the odd, involuntary working of his hands. His eyes have a diseased look of despair.
“I’m sorry,” I say more gently. “You asked me to be frank, and I thought it might be better, really, if you knew.”
“Yes. Yes. I’m very glad you told me. Thank you.”
“I think it would be much better if you didn’t have anything more to do with her at all. It can’t lead to anything but humiliation, Warren. She isn’t worthy of you.”