The doctor, professional man as he was and inured to such
spectacles, was startled! The plate before him showed the
Princess's face in all its beautiful contour, but only dimly
veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the whole bony
structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; even the graceful,
swan-like neck showed the articulated vertebral column that
supported it in all its hideous reality. The beautiful shoulders
were there, dimly as in a dream--but beneath was the empty
clavicle, the knotty joint, the hollow sternum, and the ribs of a
skeleton half length!

The doctor's voice broke the silence. "My friend," he said dryly,
"you see only the truth! You see what she really is, this peerless
Princess of yours. You see her as she is to-day, and you see her
kinship to the bones that have lain for centuries in yonder
pyramid. Yet they were once as fair as this, and this was as fair
as they--in effect the same! You that have madly, impiously adored
her superficial beauty, the mere dust of tomorrow, let this be a
warning to you! You that have no soul to speak of, let that
suffice you! Take her and be happy. Adieu!"

Yet, as he passed out of the fitting tomblike gloom of the
apartment and descended the stairs, he murmured to himself: "Odd
that I should have lent him my camera with the Rontgen-ray
attachment still on. No matter! It is not the first time that the
Princess has appeared in two parts the same evening."


VII