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my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of
her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot
breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as
one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer,
nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the
super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp
teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in
languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.

But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as
lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his
being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened
involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair
woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed
with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks
blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such
wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were
positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames
of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the
lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick eyebrows that met
over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. With
a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then
motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back. It was
the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a
voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through
the air and then ring in the room he said,

"How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him
when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to
me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me."

The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him.
"You yourself never loved. You never love!" On this the other women
joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the
room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed like the
pleasure of fiends.

Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said
in a soft whisper, "Yes, I too can love. You yourselves can tell it
from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am
done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! Go! I must
awaken him, for there is work to be done."

"Are we to have nothing tonight?" said one of them, with a low laugh,
as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and
which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For
answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened
it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as
of a half smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was
aghast with horror. But as I looked, they disappeared, and with them
the dreadful bag. There was no door near them, and they could not
have passed me without my noticing.

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