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glass with her finger, she called, "Is any one there? Lord David? Are
you come already? What time is it then? Is that you, Barkilphedro?" She
turned from the glass. "No! it was not there. Is there any one in the
bathroom? Will you answer? Of course not. No one could come that way."
Going to the silver lace curtain, she raised it with her foot, thrust it
aside with her shoulder, and entered the marble room. An agonized
numbness fell upon Gwynplaine. No possibility of concealment. It was too
late to fly. Moreover, he was no longer equal to the exertion. He wished
that the earth might open and swallow him up. Anything to hide him.
She saw him. She stared, immensely astonished, but without the slightest
nervousness. Then, in a tone of mingled pleasure and contempt, she said,
"Why, it is Gwynplaine!" Suddenly with a rapid spring, for this cat was
a panther, she flung herself on his neck.
Suddenly, pushing him back, and holding him by both shoulders with her
small claw-like hands, she stood up face to face with him, and began to
gaze at him with a strange expression.
It was a fatal glance she gave him with her Aldebaran-like eyes--a
glance at once equivocal and starlike. Gwynplaine watched the blue eye
and the black eye, distracted by the double ray of heaven and of hell
that shone in the orbs thus fixed on him. The man and the woman threw a
malign dazzling reflection one on the other. Both were fascinated--he
by her beauty, she by his deformity. Both were in a measure
awe-stricken. Pressed down, as by an overwhelming weight, he was
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