"Oncle Julien!" she whispered, almost bursting into tears. Oh, this was the grandest 
vision she had ever beheld!
  
  She looked down into the hallway. More lovely patterns that she'd never seen before. 
And through the first of the high parlor doorways, the very doorway through which a long 
ago cousin had been shot from this very stairway, she saw that the room was no longer the 
room of the present, and that tiny flames danced in the graceful crystal gasoliers.
  
  Ah, but the rug was the same rug! And there were Julien's gold damask chairs.
  
  She hurried down, glancing to right and left as the details caught her - the old gas 
sconces with their fluted crystal saucers of light, and the leaded glass around the huge 
front door, which had not been there before.
  
  The music was as loud perhaps as a Victrola could get. And ah, behold the whatnot shelf 
all crowded with tiny ceramic figures, and the brass clock on the front mantel, and the 
Greek statues on the rear mantel, and the draperies of a mellow old velvet, burnished and 
fringed, and puddling on the polished floor.
  
  The doorframes were painted to look like marble! So were the baseboards. It was that 
old kind of graining, so popular at the end of the century, and the gaslight nickered 
steadily against the darkly papered ceiling as if the little jets were dancing to the 
rhythm of the waltz.
  
  What flaw could there be in this fabric? The rug was the very same rug she'd seen 
earlier, but that made perfect sense, didn't it, it had been Julien's, and there were his 
lovely fauteuils grouped together for conversation in the very center of the rooms.
  
  She lifted her arms, and found herself dancing on the balls of her feet, in a circle, 
round and round, till the narrow nightgown flared around her, making a perfect narrow 
bell. She sang with the soprano, understanding the Italian effortlessly, though that was 
the most recent of all the languages she'd learned, and enchanted with the simple rhythm, 
and then swaying wildly back and forth, bending from the waist and letting her hair whip 
out and all over her face and tossing it again, so it tumbled down her back. Her eyes 
swept the veined and yellowed paper of the ceiling, and then in a blur, she saw the big 
sofa, Michael's new sofa, only it didn't have the beige damask on it now, but rather a 
worn gold velvet like the draperies which hung from the windows, gorgeous and warm in the 
flickering light.
  
  Michael was sitting motionless on the couch looking at her. She stopped in midstep, her 
arms curved downward like those of a ballerina, and felt her hair shift and tumble again 
off her shoulders. He was afraid. He sat in the middle of the couch in his cotton pajamas 
staring at her, as if she were something utterly terrifying or grotesque. The music went 
on and on, and slowly she took a deep breath, getting her pulse under control again and 
then coming near to him, thinking that if she had ever seen anything truly scary in her 
life, it was the sight of him sitting there in this room, staring at her, as if he were 
about to go out of his mind.
  
  He wasn't trembling. He was like her. He feared nothing. He was just all anxious and 
upset and horrified by the vision, and he was seeing it, he had to be, and he was hearing 
the music, and as she drew closer, and sank down on the sofa beside him, he turned, 
looking at her, eyes wide with gentle amazement, and then she locked her mouth on his, 
pulled him down to her, and slam, bang, it connected, the chain reaction snapping through 
her. She had him. He was hers.
  
  He pulled back for one instant as if to look at her again, as if to make sure that she 
was there. His eyes were still cloudy from the drugs.  Maybe they were helping now - 
putting his sublime Catholic conscience to sleep. She kissed him again hurriedly and a 
little sloppily and then reached between his legs. Ah, he was ready!
  
  His arms locked around her, and he gave some soft complaining sound that was very like 
him, like it's just too late now, or something, or God forgive me. She could all but hear 
the words.
  
  She pulled him down on top of her, sinking deep into the sofa, smelling dust, as the 
waltz surged and the soprano sang on. She stretched out beneath him as he rose up, 
protectively, and then she felt his hand, trembling slightly in a beguiling fashion, as 
it ripped up the flannel and felt her naked belly and then her naked thigh.
  
  "You know what else is there," she whispered, and she pulled him down hard again. But 
his hand went before him, pushing gently into her, awakening her, rather like setting off 
a burglar alarm, and she felt her own juices slipping between her legs.
  
  "Come on, I can't hold back," she said, feeling the heat flood her face. "Give it to 
me." It probably sounded savage, but she couldn't play little girl a moment more. He went 
into her, hurting her deliciously, and then began the piston motion that made her throw 
back her head and almost scream. "Yes, yes, yes."
  
  "OK, Molly Bloom!" he cried out in a hoarse whisper, and then she came and came and 
came - gritting her teeth, scarce able to stand it, moaning, and then screaming with her 
lips shut - and so did he.
  
  She lay to one side, out of breath, wet all over as if she were Ophelia and they had 
just found her in the flowerstrewn stream. Her hand was caught in his hair, pulling it 
too hard maybe. And then a shrieking sound shocked her and she opened her eyes.
  
  Someone had torn the needle from the Victrola record. She turned, just as he did, and 
she stared at the bent little figure of Eugenia, the black maid, standing grimly beside 
the table, her arms folded, her chin jutting.
  
  And quite suddenly there was no Victrola. The sofa was damask.
  
  The dim lights were electric.
  
  And Eugenia was standing by nothing, having merely taken a righteous position, dead 
opposite to them, as they lay tangled on the sofa, and she said:
  
  "Mr. Mike, what do you think you are doing with that child!"
  
  He was baffled, distressed, ashamed, confused, probably ready to commit suicide. He