For such a long time he had been gripped inside himself, and withheld.

For such a long time it had been hard and unyielding, so hard and unyielding. He had wanted nothing, his desire had kept itself back, fast back. For such a long time his desire for woman had withheld itself, hard and resistant. All his deep, desirous blood had been locked, he had wanted nobody, and nothing. And it had been hard to live, so. Without desire, without any movement of passionate love, only gripped back in recoil! That was an experience to endure.

And now came his desire back. But strong, fierce as iron. Like the strength of an eagle with the lightning in its talons. Something to glory in, something overweening, the powerful male passion, arrogant, royal, Jove's thunderbolt. Aaron's black rod of power, blossoming again with red Florentine lilies and fierce thorns. He moved about in the splendour of his own male lightning, invested in the thunder of the male passion-power. He had got it back, the male godliness, the male godhead.

So he slept, and dreamed violent dreams of strange, black strife, something like the street-riot in Milan, but more terrible. In the morning, however, he cared nothing about his dreams. As soon as it was really light, he rose, and opened his window wide. It was a grey, slow morning. But he saw neither the morning nor the river nor the woman walking on the gravel river-bed with her goose nor the green hill up to San Miniato. He watched the tuft of palm-trees, and the terrace beside it. He could just distinguish the terrace clearly, among the green of foliage. So he stood at his window for a full hour, and did not move.

Motionless, planted, he stood and watched that terrace across above the Arno. But like a statue.

After an hour or so, he looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. So he rang for his coffee, and meanwhile still stood watching the terrace on the hill. He felt his turn had come. The phoenix had risen in fire again, out of the ashes.

Therefore at ten o'clock he went over the bridge. He wrote on the back of his card a request, would she please let him have the little book of songs, that he might practise them over. The manservant went, and came back with the request that Aaron should wait. So Aaron entered, while the man took his hat.

The manservant spoke only French and Spanish, no English. He was a Spaniard, with greyish hair and stooping shoulders, and dark, mute-seeming eyes. He spoke as little as possible. The Marchesa had inherited him from her father.

Aaron sat in the little sitting-room and waited. After a rather long time the Marchesa came in--wearing a white, thin blouse and a blue skirt. She was hardly made up at all. She had an odd pleased, yet brooding look on her face as she gave Aaron her hand. Something brooded between her brows. And her voice was strange, with a strange, secret undertone, that he could not understand. He looked up at her. And his face was bright, and his knees, as he sat, were like the knees of the gods.

"You wanted the book of _chansons_?" she said.

"I wanted to learn your tunes," he replied.

"Yes. Look--here it is!" And she brought him the little yellow book. It was just a hand-book, with melody and words only, no accompaniment. So she stood offering him the book, but waiting as if for something else, and standing as if with another meaning.

He opened the leaves at random.

"But I ought to know which ones you sing," said he, rising and standing by her side with the open book.

"Yes," she said, looking over his arm. He turned the pages one by one.

"_Trois jeunes tambours_," said she. "Yes, that.... Yes, _En passant par la Lorraine_.... _Aupres de ma blonde_.... Oh, I like that one so much--" He stood and went over the tune in his mind.

"Would you like me to play it?" he said.

"Very much," said she.

So he got his flute, propped up the book against a vase, and played the tune, whilst she hummed it fragmentarily. But as he played, he felt that he did not cast the spell over her. There was no connection. She was in some mysterious way withstanding him. She was withstanding him, and his male super-power, and his thunderbolt desire. She was, in some indescribable way, throwing cold water over his phoenix newly risen from the ashes of its nest in flames.

He realised that she did not want him to play. She did not want him to look at the songs. So he put the book away, and turned round, rather baffled, not quite sure what was happening, yet feeling she was withstanding him. He glanced at her face: it was inscrutable: it was her Cleopatra face once more, yet with something new and warm in it.

He could not understand it. What was it in her face that puzzled him?

Almost angered him? But she could not rob him of his male power, she could not divest him of his concentrated force.

"Won't you take off your coat?" she said, looking at him with strange, large dark eyes. A strange woman, he could not understand her. Yet, as he sat down again, having removed his overcoat, he felt her looking at his limbs, his physical body. And this went against him, he did not want it. Yet quite fixed in him too was the desire for her, her beautiful white arms, her whole soft white body. And such desire he would not contradict nor allow to be contradicted. It was his will also. Her whole soft white body--to possess it in its entirety, its fulness.

"What have you to do this morning?" she asked him.

"Nothing," he said. "Have you?" He lifted his head and looked at her.

"Nothing at all," said she.

And then they sat in silence, he with his head dropped. Then again he looked at her.

"Shall we be lovers?" he said.

She sat with her face averted, and did not answer. His heart struck heavily, but he did not relax.

"Shall we be lovers?" came his voice once more, with the faintest touch of irony.

Her face gradually grew dusky. And he wondered very much to see it.

"Yes," said she, still not looking at him. "If you wish."

"I do wish," he said. And all the time he sat with his eyes fixed on her face, and she sat with her face averted.

"Now?" he said. "And where?"

Again she was silent for some moments, as if struggling with herself.

Then she looked at him--a long, strange, dark look, incomprehensible, and which he did not like.

"You don't want emotions? You don't want me to say things, do you?" he said.

A faint ironic smile came on her face.

"I know what all that is worth," she said, with curious calm equanimity.

"No, I want none of that."

"Then--?"

But now she sat gazing on him with wide, heavy, incomprehensible eyes.

It annoyed him.

"What do you want to see in me?" he asked, with a smile, looking steadily back again.

And now she turned aside her face once more, and once more the dusky colour came in her cheek. He waited.

"Shall I go away?" he said at length.

"Would you rather?" she said, keeping her face averted.

"No," he said.

Then again she was silent.

"Where shall I come to you?" he said.

She paused a moment still, then answered:

"I'll go to my room."

"I don't know which it is," he said.

"I'll show it you," she said.