I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me. She looked very pleased with herself. There was a deliberate voluptuousness in her actions which was both exciting and repulsive. She arched her neck and actually licked her lips like an animal. I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue against the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head. The lips went below the level of my mouth and chin, and seemed to attach themselves to my throat. Then she paused, and I could feel her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel her hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is about to tickle it comes nearer and nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of her lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and waiting there. I closed my eyes in slow, sleepy ecstasy and waited, waited with a beating heart.

But at that instant, another feeling swept through me as quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, as if I was being washed in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with a giant's power pull her back. Her blue eyes were transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with anger. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even in a devil from hell. His eyes seemed to be burning. The red light in them was as bright as if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was as pale as death, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a bar of white-hot metal.