‘Half the night is spent; and the crown of moonlight
Fades, and now the crown of the stars is paling;
Yields the sky reluctant to coming morning;
Still I lie lonely.’
Lythande could see tears on Bercy’s cheeks.
‘I will love you as no woman has ever been loved.’
Between the girl on the bed, and the motionless form of the magician, as the
magician’s robe fell heavily to the floor, a wraith-form grew, the very wraith
and fetch, at first, of Lythande. tall and lean, with blazing eyes and a star
between its brows and a body white and unscarred; the form of the magician, but
this one triumphant in virility, advancing on the motionless woman, waiting. Her
mind fluttered away in arousal, was caught, captured, be-spelled. Lythande let
her see the image for a moment; she could not see the true Lythande behind;
then, as her eyes closed in ecstatic awareness of the touch, Lythande smoothed
light fingers over her closed eyes.
‘See – what I bid you to see!
‘Hear – what I bid you hear!
‘Feel – only what I bid you feel, Bercy!’
And now she was wholly under the spell of the wraith. Unmoving, stony-eyed,
Lythande watched as her lips closed on emptiness and she kissed invisible lips;
and moment by moment Lythande knew what touched her, what caressed her. Rapt and
ravished by illusion that brought her again and again to the heights of ecstasy,
till she cried out in abandonment. Only to Lythande that cry was bitter; for she
cried out not to Lythande but to the man-wraith who possessed her.
At last she lay all but unconscious, satiated; and Lythande watched in agony.