The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

THE VIOLINIST THE room was cloudy with a poisonous incense: saffron, opoponax, galbanum, musk, and myrrh, the purity of the last ingredient a curse of blasphemy, the final sneer; as a degenerate might insult a Raphael by putting it in a room devoted to debauchery. The girl was tall and finely built, huntress-lithe. Her dress, close-fitted, was of a gold-brown silk that matched, but could not rival, the coils that bound her brow—glittering and hissing like snakes. Her face was Greek in delicacy; but what meant such a mouth in it? The mouth of a satyr or a devil. It was full and strong, curved twice, the edges upwards, an angry purple, the lips flat. Her smile was like the snarl of a wild beast. She stood, violin in hand, before the wall. Against it was a large tablet of mosaic; many squares and many colours. On the squares were letters in an unknown tongue. She began to play, her gray eyes fixed upon one square on whose centre stood this character, N. It was in black on white; and the four sides of the square were blue, yellow, red, and black. She began to play. The air was low, sweet, soft, and slow. It seemed that she was listening, not to her own playing, but for some other sound. Her bow quickened; the air grew IV T 277