Birdsong

The still-pink skin of Madame Aziare's cheek.

Laughing softly to himself.
He saw, with some surprise, that what had struck him most he has not written about at all.
Stephen saw the skin of her cheeks stain lightly.
I'm proposing an afternoon in the water-gardens next Sunday.
The vital, unspeaking figure of Madame Azaire.
He didn't ask himself if she was beautiful, because the physical effect of her presence made the question insignificant.
Stephen imagined different eras of fashion and history summonsed by her decorative way of dressing.
Bringing his reverie to a halt.
With a basket on her arm.
Flustered when he accosted her. 
I despair of you, madame.
He loved to go to his room and think of this young, vital woman.
She was afraid of him. He was not like other men she had known.
He fell asleep and dreamed a dream.
Passively beguiled.
There was blood on his hand.
He felt like an eavesdropper on this female life.
Lisette wore the little white dress her step-mother had forbidden on their visit to the water-gardens.
For want of something to say.
Tearing the white blouse as she did so, revealing a thin satin strap beneath.
She was choking with passion for him, but he frightened her.
She wanted to comfort him but also to be taken by him, to be used by him.
She found him clenched in combat with himself.
to help him pull down her silk drawers to reveal what she suddenly knew he has long been imagining.
Turning like a key in the split lock of her flesh.
Saw him take the rumpled sheet between his teeth and begin to bite it.
Isabelle settled herself, luxuriously, on the feeling of impalement.
She took his damaged hand and kissed the bruise and swollen knuckles.
The hair was disarrayed. 
They lay, amazed and unsure.
She saw them at the start of some descent whose end she could not imagine.
Rent a little pony and trap and take a picnic.
She had to check and recheck the room for signs of adultery.
It had stained the ivory silk drawers that had beed bought for her by her mother in Paris as part of her wedding trousseau. 
An intimacy that pressed her heart.
He was confident that what had occurred between them had changed things irrevocably.
One day she might lie to him and he would never know. Perhaps all women had this ability to survive.
She felt his eyes on her waist and hips. For a moment she was naked again.
A wood of confusion.
"Please" she said "Please" he did not know if she meant him to stop or to continue.
She covered his face with kisses.
Before she could take the last three or four spasms in her mouth.
"After all we said and all we did. How could you doubt?"
Stephen felt the first twinge of jealous self-interest cloud his sympathy.
Pastel dresses with coloured parasols.
Isabelle felt her heart whisper and beat.
"I think you're a girl with a strong imagination"
"So it meant nothing at all?" "I'm afraid not."
"Touch me, then, touch me as you touch her."
Despite himself Stephen felt a reflex of desire.
Their hurried and clandestine couplings were made more powerful to him by their element of fear.
The urgency of limited time removed all inhibitions.
In the reckless trust of his passion he told her everything, expecting her to value his honesty above any meaner feeling of unease.
Although he had supplied the words, the idea had been hers.
I pursued your wife. I seduced her.

Constant themes of red surrounding Isabelle. The ruby at her throat, her attire, the red room.
How the house was so full of little nooks and secret rooms, that her husband forgot entirely about the red room, as he turned the house upside to find the room she and Stephen made love in. He never found it, never thought of it.

It was a place he had not refound, but which had stayed, as Stephen had feared it might for him, beyond the reach of his memory.