But well before morning, I saw him change.  The others had long gone to bed.  I was turning the pages of the book obediently when I saw him staring, beastlike, from his chair, as if some ravener had come into him and banished all his civilized faculties and left him thus, hungry, with glazed eyes and reddening mouth, the glittering blood finding its myriad little paths over the silky margin of his lips.

He rose, a drugged thing, and came towards me with a rhythm of movements that was alien and struck the coldest terror in my heart.

His fingers flashed, closed, beckoned.

I ran to him.  He lifted me in both hands, clutching my arms ever so gently, and tucked his face against my neck.  From the soles of my feet up my back through my arms and my neck and scalp, I felt it.

Where he flung me I didn't know.  Was it our bed or some hasty cushions he found in another closer salon?  "Give it to me," I said sleepily, and when it came into my mouth, I was gone.