But a smile of immeasurable distress appeared in Sabina, and then was instantly effaced by another smile: the smile of seduction. When Lillian was about to seize upon the distress, to enter the tender, vulnerable regions of her being, then Sabina concealed herself again behind the smile of a woman of seduction.

Pity, protection, solace, they all fell away from Lillian like gifts of trivial import, because with the smile of seduction Sabina assumed simultaneously the smile of an all-powerful enchantress.

Lillian forgot the face of the child in distress, hungrily demanding a truthful love, and yet, in terror that this very truth might destroy the love. The child face faded before this potent smile to which Lillian succumbed.

She no longer sought the meaning of Sabina's words. She looked at Sabina's blonde hair tumbling down, at her eyebrows peaked upward, at her smile slanting perfidiously, a gem-like smile which made a whirlpool of her feelings.

A man passed by and laughed at their absorption.

"Don't mind, don't mind," said Sabina, as if she were familiar with this situation. "I won't do you any harm."

"You can't do me any harm."

Sabina smiled. "I destroy people without meaning to. Everywhere I go things become confused and terrifying. For you I would like to begin all over again, to go to New York and become a great actress, to become beautiful again. I won't appear any more with clothes that are held together with safety pins! I've been living stupidly, blindly, doing nothing but drinking, smoking, talking. I'm afraid of disillusioning you, Lillian."

They walked down the streets aimlessly, unconscious of their surroundings, arm in arm with a joy that was rising every moment, and with every word they uttered. A swelling joy that mounted with each step they took together and with the occasional brushing of their hips as they walked.

The traffic eddied around them but everything else, houses and trees were lost in a fog. Only their voices distinct, carrying such phrases as they could utter out of their female labyrinth of oblique perceptions.

Sabina said: "I wanted to telephone you last night. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was to have talked so much. I knew all the time I couldn't say what I wanted to say."

"You too have fears, although you seem so strong," said Lillian.

"I do everything wrong. It's good that you don't ever ask questions about facts. Facts don't matter. It's the essence that matters. You never ask the kind of question I hate: what city? what man? what year? what time? Facts. I despise them."

Bodies close, arm in arm, hands locked together over her breast. She had taken Lillian's hand and held it over her breast as if to warm it.

The city had fallen away. They were walking into a world of their own for which neither could find a name.

They entered a softly lighted place, mauve and diffuse, which enveloped them in velvet closeness.

Sabina took off her silver bracelet and put it around Lillian's wrist.