Anna Lombard, page 179 by Victoria Cross
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opulent, or that there was any remarkable development; quite the contrary: but there was something in the wonderful purity of the skin, whiter than the satin below it and absolutely unstained by the faintest course of a vein or the smallest mole, and something in the modeling of the shoulders and the turn of the neck that seemed to speak to one. The beauty of her body, like that of her face, was not in the form, not in the flesh. It was the beauty of intense expression. The cool courage of her spirit seemed expressed in that firm, smooth expanse down to the curve of her low breasts; and all the passionate abandonment of which she was capable, in the pose of her shoulders and the long, soft, white line from shoulder to elbow.
She came toward me, faintly smiling, and gave herself into my arms; and her face and body spoke to me so clearly there was no need of words between us. She meant to convey to me and I understood her that she had for my sake conquered her grief and broken her memories; that she was no longer sacred to another or to the contemplation of the past; that she had come back to life and the enjoyment of it; and that my period of self-restraint and selfdenial was over. And I, seeing that she wished and expected it, permitted myself the touch and the kiss of passion.
A little later, when Anna, with an old general, led off the dancers, she was radiant; and the eyes of the crowd followed her instinctively, attracted and held by the curious exuberance of vitality that seemed speaking in face and form. As we danced together and she gave herself up to me, fitting all the smooth undulations of her movements to mine; as my arm pressed the warm, bare flesh of her shoulder and our eyes looked into each other's and our breath intermingled, my thoughts were borne back to the first evening we had met, and I contrasted that slight, loose bond of attraction, based on the pleasure of the senses, with the steel-like chain that held us now.
How infinitely dearer to me now she wa?; after the pain an