When he returned to his singing an invisible web had already been spun between their eyes. She no longer watched his hands on the drumskin but his mouth. His lips were full, evenly so, rich but firmly designed, but the way he held them was like an offer of fruit. They never closed tightly or withdrew by the slightest contraction, but remained offered.

His singing was offered to her in this cup of his mouth, and she drank it intently, without spilling a drop of this incantation of desire. Each note was the brush of his mouth upon her. His singing grew exalted and the drumming deeper and sharper and it showered upon her heart and body. Drum - drum - drum - drum - drum - upon her heart, she was the drum, her skin was taut under his hands, and the drumming vibrated through the rest of her body. Wherever he rested his eyes, she felt the drumming of his fingers upon her stomach, her breasts, her hips. His eyes rested on her naked feet in sandals and they beat an answering rhythm. His eyes rested on the indented waist where the hips began to swell out, and she felt possessed by his song. When he stopped drumming he left his hands spread on the drumskin, as if he did not want to remove his hands from her body, and they continued to look at each other and then away as if fearing everyone had seen the desire flowing between them.

But when they danced he changed. The direct, the inescapable way he placed his knees between hers, as if implanting the rigidity of his desire. He held her firmly, so encompassed that every movement they made was made as one body. He held her head against his, with a physical finiteness, as if for eternity. His desire became a center of gravity, a final welding. He was not much taller than she but held himself proudly, and when she raised her eyes into his, his eyes thrust into her very being, so sensually direct that she could not bear their radiance, their claim. Fever shone in his face like moonlight. At the same time a strange wave of anger appeared which she felt and could not understand.

When the dance ended, his bow was a farewell, as finite as his desire had been.

She waited in anguish and bewilderment.

He went back to his singing and drumming but no longer offered them to her.

Yet she knew he had desired her, and why was he destroying it now? Why?

Her anxiety grew so violent she wanted to stop the drumming, stop the others from dancing. But she checked this impulse, sensing it would estrange him. There was his pride. There was this strange mixture of passivity and aggressivity in him. In music he had been glowing and soft and offered; in the dance, tyrannical. She must wait. She must respect the ritual.