The Hidden Force by Louis Couperus Page B

approaching her, who walked past her. With one it was his bearing, his voice; with another it was the curve of his neck on his shoulders; in a third it was his hand on his knee; but whatever it was, she saw it at once, at a glance. She knew instantly, in a trice. She had weighed up the passer-by in a fraction of a second and she knew at once whom she rejected—and that was the majority—and those she deemed worthy—and they were many. And those whom she rejected in that split second in her own supreme court, with that one glance, in that one instant, could abandon all hope: she, the priestess, would never admit them to thetemple. For others the temple was open, but only behind the screen of her decorum. However shameless she might be, she was always decorous, and love was always secret; for the world she was nothing but the charming, smiling Commissioner’s wife, somewhat indolent, who won everyone over with her smile. When people did not see her, they spoke ill of her; once they saw her, she immediately captivated them. Among all those with whom she had shared the secret of her love, there existed a kind of freemasonry, a mysterious cult: whenever two of them met in passing they would exchange no more than a few whispered words about the same memory. And Léonie, milky-white, could sit calmly in a large circle around a marble table where at least two or three men had been initiated into the secret. It did not ruffle her composure or dim her smile. She smiled ad nauseam. She would barely glance from one to the other, while she briefly reappraised them, with her infallible judgement. She had scarcely any recollection of past time spent with them, scarcely any thought of the next day’s assignation. It was the secret that existed only in the mystery of intimacy, and was therefore never divulged in the profane world. If in the circle a foot sought to touch hers, she would withdraw hers. She never flirted, indeed she was sometimes rather dull, stiff, prim and smiling. In the freemasonry between the initiates and herself, she revealed the mystery, but in the eyes of the world, in the circles round the marble tables, she did not give so much as a glance, a handshake, and her dress did not so much as approach a trouser leg.
    She had been bored during these days at Pajaram after accepting the invitation to the milling celebrations, which she had declined in previous years, but now that she saw Addy approaching, she was no longer bored. Of course she had known him for years and had seen him grow from a child to a boy to a man, and she had even kissed him occasionally as a boy. She had been weighing him up for a long time, the Seducer. But now he approached with his halo of sunshine, she appraised him once more: his handsome, slim, animal quality and the glow of his Seducer’s eyes in the shadowy brown of his young Moor’s face, the curling swell of his lips, made just for kissing, with the young down of his moustache, the tigerish strength and suppleness of his Don Juan’s limbs. It all blazed out at her and made her blink. As he said hello and sat down, scattering cheerful words round the circle filled with languorous conversation and sleepy thoughts—as if showering a handful of his sunshine, his gold dust, over them all, over all those women: his mother and sisters and nieces and Doddy and Léonie—Léonie looked at him, just as they all looked at him, and her gaze moved to his hands. She could have kissed those hands; she suddenly fell in love with the shape of his fingers, with the brown tigerish strength of his palms. She fell instantly in love with all the wild animal quality that exuded from the young man’s every pore like a scent of virility. She could feel her blood pulsing, scarcely controllable, despite her great skill at remaining cool and decorous in the circles round the marble tables. But she was no longer bored. She had an aim for the next few days. Yet…her blood was pulsing so violently that Theo had