...of seduction

After he had gone we sat for some moments in silence. I kept my eyes on the pattern of the carpet, a decoration of small intertwined snakes among ivy leaves, and for some reason my mind went back to the time when I had been sitting on the bed with Bess's mother and had so closely examined the patchwork quilt. Now I felt the same intensity of atmosphere between the two of us, the certainty that some word or action of extraordinary significance was impending, but this time I was master of myself, and I watched Eustasia out of the corner of my eye, since I felt no urge to make the first move. She was sitting with her head thrust slightly forward, and of her broad determined face was a look of such softness that I was startled; for all the stubbornness and self-will and strain seemed to have gone from her face, leaving it with a strange purity like an April sky, so that she appeared unearthly, a spirit whose whole essence was compassion. Yet I could feel the divan dented by her heavy limbs, and saw the blood just pulsing in a tiny vein above one cheek.

[The Aerodrome, Warner, R.]