"She looked up from her draft, her red lips redder still with blood, and smiled at me. Before I realized what she did, she raised her hand and bit herself upon the wrist, then held the bleeding white limb up to me. 'Drink, belovèd; drink my blood as I drink yours,' she whispered hoarsely. 'It will make us one!'
"Her blood was salty and acerb, but I drank it greedily as I had drunk champagne an hour or two before, sucked it thirstily as she sucked mine, and it seemed to mount up to my brain like some cursed oriental drug. A chill ran through me, as though a bitter storm-wind swept in from the sea; a red mist swam before my eyes; I felt that I was sinking, sinking in a lake of bitter, scented blood."
The speaker paused and passed a hand across his forehead, where small gouts of perspiration gleamed. "Then" he began, but Jules de Grandin raised his hand.
"You need not tell us more, Monsieur," he murmured. "In England and America there is a silly superstition that seduction is exclusively a masculine prerogative. Eh bien, you and I know otherwise, n'est-ce-pas?"
Taviton looked gratefully at the small Frenchman. "Thanks,” he muttered.
"MacLeod refused point-blank to marry us. 'I'd sooner gie ye'r lich t' th' kirk-yard turf than join ye wie yon de'l's bairn,' he told me when I asked him.
"When we asked a priest to marry us we found French law required so much red tape—getting baptismal certificates and all that nonsense—that it was impractical; so I applied for leave to London, and Elaine joined me on the ship. We were married by the master just as soon as we were out of French territorial waters.
"I cabled home for funds and we had a grand time shopping, first in London, then at the Gaieties LaFayette in Paris when my discharge came through.
"But I wasn't happy. Passion may be part of love, but it's no substitute. Elaine was like a quenchless fire; there was no limit to her appetites nor any satisfying them. She wanted me, and all that I possessed. I never saw her eat much heavy food, but the amount of caviar and oysters and pasties she consumed was almost past belief, and she drank enough champagne and brandy to have put a dipsomaniac to shame; yet I never saw her show the smallest sign of drunkenness. No kind of sport or exercise held any interest for her, but she'd dance all afternoon and until the final tune was played at night, and still be fresh when I was so exhausted that I thought I'd drop. Shopping never seemed to tire her, either. She could make the rounds of twenty stores, looking over practically the entire stock of each, then come home glowing with delight at what she'd purchased and be ready for a matinee or thé dansant and an evening's session at the supper clubs.
"When I appraised her thus and realized her shallowness and the selfishness which amounted to egotism, I felt I hated her; but more than that I loathed myself for having let her make a slave of me, and against the memory of her branding kisses and the night when we had drunk each other's blood there rose like a reproachful ghost the recollection of the evening I had said good-bye to Agnes just before I went to Dix to proceed to ship at Hoboken. How sweet and cool and comforting that last kiss seemed; there was something like a benediction in her promise, 'I'll be waiting for you, Frazier, waiting if it means for time and all eternity, and loving you each minute that I wait.'
"But when I lay in Elaine's arms so feverishly clasped it seemed our bodies melted and were fused in one, and felt
