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And he laughed as he went towards the sirens' house. It amused him to think that a stranger, an "Inglese," fancied that he could play with a Sicilian, who had never been "worsted," even by one of his own countrymen. Maurice had begun to dread the arrival of the post.
"It is, of course, difficult and painful for that coarse and unfathomable vanity which is characteristic of every man, and which might be called 'malism', not to stir such a charming fire, difficult to act the Joseph and the fool, to turn away his eyes, and, as it were, to put wax into his ears, like the companions of Ulysses when they were attracted by the divine, seductive songs of the Sirens, difficult only to touch that pretty table covered with a perfectly new cloth, at which you are invited to take a seat before any one else, in such a suggestive voice, and are requested to quench your thirst and to taste that new wine, whose fresh and strange flavor you will never forget.
The dispute had embittered his feelings already sore. It had tended to give him a still more distorted view of the country to which he had come back. Passion had largely unbalanced his judgment. Ancient fable has pointed out the danger of falling under the fascinations of the sirens; but even that seems preferable to becoming bewitched by the furies.
At length, when she felt sufficiently composed, she went to her own chamber, where she made a more elaborate and beautiful toilet than usual, preparatory to joining her husband and their guest at the dinner-table. "Now smile, eyes! smile, lips! flatter, tongue! Be a siren among the sirens, Sybil!
At another I had thought we must scud under bare poles for open sea. The coast sheered vertical like a rampart wall, and up up up that dripping rock clutched the tossing billows like watery arms of sirens. It needed no seaman to prophecy the fate of a boat caught between that rock and a nor'easter. Then the gale would veer, and out raced a tidal billow of waters like to take the St.
He pointed out, on the front of the building, a shield supported by two sirens, not unlike that which may be seen on the arcade, now closed, through which there used to be a passage from the Quai des Tuileries to the courtyard of the old Louvre, and over which the words may still be seen, "Bibliotheque du Cabinet du Roi."
He promised to feast himself, to eat his bellyful of roast meats and other German delicacies, when he could do so without paying for them as he was poor. He was savage that he did not know how to make up to these gallant sirens, who snubbed cardinals, abbots, councillors, legates, bishops, princes and margraves just as if they have been penniless clerks.
As her physical hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to the storm without, so the storm flinging itself against the windows, powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold, black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and limitations.
I started with the rest, and then after the gay crowd were part way down stairs I turned back. "Please, mayn't I join your little class, if I'll be very good?" I begged. "I don't want Bert Garrison to be left alone at the mercy of two such sirens." Miss Van Allen hesitated. Her pink-tipped forefinger rested a moment on her curved lip. "Yes," she said, nodding her head. "Yes, stay, Mr. Calhoun.
They found that very difficult, as they had not accurate descriptions. "A beauty named Atupu," or "A black-eyed girl?" They had no aid among the girls they interrogated. "Why bother with some one who may be dead when we are here?" they asked. And Juan listened to the sirens and rested content. At Lovaina's there were seventy to dinner.
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