even with these savages do I go veiled, lest they vex me, and I should
slay them. Say, wilt thou see?"

"I will," I answered, my curiosity overpowering me.

She lifted her white and rounded arms--never had I seen such arms
before--and slowly, very slowly, withdrew some fastening beneath her
hair. Then all of a sudden the long, corpse-like wrappings fell from her
to the ground, and my eyes travelled up her form, now only robed in
a garb of clinging white that did but serve to show its perfect and
imperial shape, instinct with a life that was more than life, and with a
certain serpent-like grace that was more than human. On her little feet
were sandals, fastened with studs of gold. Then came ankles more perfect
than ever sculptor dreamed of. About the waist her white kirtle was
fastened by a double-headed snake of solid gold, above which her
gracious form swelled up in lines as pure as they were lovely, till the
kirtle ended on the snowy argent of her breast, whereon her arms were
folded. I gazed above them at her face, and--I do not exaggerate--shrank
back blinded and amazed. I have heard of the beauty of celestial beings,
now I saw it; only this beauty, with all its awful loveliness and
purity, was _evil_--at least, at the time, it struck me as evil. How am
I to describe it? I cannot--simply I cannot! The man does not live
whose pen could convey a sense of what I saw. I might talk of the great
changing eyes of deepest, softest black, of the tinted face, of the
broad and noble brow, on which the hair grew low, and delicate, straight
features. But, beautiful, surpassingly beautiful as they all were, her
loveliness did not lie in them. It lay rather, if it can be said to have
had any fixed abiding place, in a visible majesty, in an imperial grace,
in a godlike stamp of softened power, which shone upon that radiant
countenance like a living halo. Never before had I guessed what beauty