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PARTISAN REVIEW
his lashes he sees three beautiful young ladies, two dark, with aqui–
line noses and red eyes. "The other was fair, as fair as can be, with
great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I
seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection
with some dreamy fear, but 1 could not recollect at the moment how
or where." The women have prominent teeth and "voluptuous lips ."
"I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me
with those red lips," Harker confesses. The women seem ready to
oblige. "Go on! You are first, and we shall follow," says one of the
brunettes. "He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all,"
answers the blonde. Here's what happens next:
I lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of de–
lightful anticipation . The fair girl advanced and bent over me
till
I could feel the movement of her breath upon me . Sweet it was in
one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the
nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bit–
ter offensiveness, as one smells in blood .
I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw
perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent
over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness
which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her
neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in
the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the
red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower
went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and
chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she paused ,
and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked
her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck .
Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does
when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer - nearer. I
could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensi–
tive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just
touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous
ecstasy and waited - waited with beating heart.
But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as
quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count
and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury .
In a tremendous rage, the count hurls the fair lady behind him.
"How dare you?" he says; "This man belongs to me." But "with a
laugh of ribald coquetry," she sasses him back: "You yourself never
loved; you never love!" They both know better: "Yes, I too can love;
