So he
could not marry, it was not for him. He belonged to the god Pan, to the
absolute of the senses.
All the while his beauty, so perfect and so defined, fascinated me, a
strange static perfection about him. But his movements, whilst they
fascinated, also repelled. I can always see him crouched before the
vines on his haunches, his haunches doubled together in a complete
animal unconsciousness, his face seeming in its strange golden pallor
and its hardness of line, with the gleaming black of the fine hair on
the brow and temples, like something reflective, like the reflecting
surface of a stone that gleams out of the depths of night. It was like
darkness revealed in its steady, unchanging pallor.
Again he stayed through the evening, having quarrelled once more with
the Maria about money. He quarrelled violently, yet coldly. There was
something terrifying in it. And as soon as the matter of dispute was
settled, all trace of interest or feeling vanished from him.
Yet he liked, above all things, to be near the English signori. They
seemed to exercise a sort of magnetic attraction over him.
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