our flimsies. You are on the right path. I have seen men enmeshed
by a corset cover no prettier, no daintier, than these of yours I
have seen on the line.

"I have called the washing of fine linen an art. But it is not
for itself alone. The greatest of the arts is the conquering of
men. Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for
their existence. Listen. In all times and ages have been women,
great wise women. They did not need to be beautiful. Greater then
all woman's beauty was their wisdom. Princes end potentates bowed
down before them. Nations battled over them. Empires crashed
because of them. Religions were founded on them. Aphrodite,
Astarte, the worships of the night--listen, infant-woman, of the
great women who conquered worlds of men."

And thereafter Saxon listened, in a maze, to what almost seemed a
wild farrago, save that the strange meaningless phrases were
fraught with dim, mysterious significance. She caught glimmerings
of profounds inexpressible and unthinkable that hinted
connotations lawless and terrible. The woman's speech was a lava
rush, scorching and searing; and Saxon's cheeks, and forehead,
and neck burned with a blush that continuously increased. She
trembled with fear, suffered qualms of nausea, thought sometimes
that she would faint, so madly reeled her brain; yet she could
not tear herself away, sad sat on and on, her sewing forgotten on
her lap, staring with inward sight upon a nightmare vision beyond
all imagining. At last, when it seemed she could endure no more,
and while she was wetting her dry lips to cry out in protest,
Mercedes ceased.