Whence had come those cold fires that had flared from
them, I wondered--more menacing, far more menacing,
in their cold tranquillity than the hot flames of wrath?
These eyes were not perilous--no. Calm they were and
still--yet in them a shadow of interest flickered; a ghost
of friendliness smiled.

Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of
bronze. The lips were coral crimson and--asleep. Sweet
were those lips as ever master painter, dreaming his dream
of the very soul of woman's sweetness, saw in vision and
limned upon his canvas--and asleep, nor wistful for awakening.

A proud, straight nose; a broad low brow, and over it
the masses of the tendriling tresses--tawny, lustrous topaz,
cloudy, METALLIC. Like spun silk of ruddy copper; and misty
as the wisps of cloud that Soul'tze, Goddess of Sleep, sets in
the skies of dawn to catch the wandering dreams of lovers.

Down from the wondrous face melted the rounded
column of her throat to merge into exquisite curves of
shoulders and breasts, half revealed beneath the swathing veils.

But upon that face, within her eyes, kissing her red lips
and clothing her breasts, was something unearthly.

Something that came straight out of the still mysteries
of the star-filled spaces; out of the ordered, the untroubled,
the illimitable void.