and wines; a lazy smile played on her lips--lips that outrivaled
the dewy tint of half-opening roses; the serpents in her hair and
on her rounded arms quivered in the light like living things; the
great Symbolic Eye glanced wickedly out from the white beauty of
her heaving breast; and as he surveyed her, thus resplendent in
all the startling seductiveness of her dangerous charms, her
loveliness entranced and intoxicated him like the faint perfume of
some rare and powerful exotic, ... his senses seemed to sink
drowningly in the whelming influence of her soft and dazzling
grace; and though he still resented, he could not resist her
mesmeric power. No wonder, he thought, that Sah-luma's eyes
darkened with passions as they dwelt on her! ... and no wonder
that he, like Sah-luma, was content to be gently but surely drawn
within the glittering web of her magic spell--a spell fatal, yet
too bewilderingly sweet for human strength to fight against. The
mysterious sense he had of danger lurking somewhere for Sah-luma
applied, so he fancied, in no way to himself--it did not much
matter what happened to HIM--HE was a mere nobody. He could be of
no use anywhere; he was as one banished into strange exile; his
brain--that brain he had once deemed so clear, so subtle, so
eminently reasoning and all-comprehensive--was now nothing but a
chaotic confusion of vague suggestions, and only served to very
slightly guide him in the immediate present, giving him no
practical clue at all as to the past through which he had lived,
or the circumstances he most wished to remember. He was a fool--a
dreamer--ungifted--unfamous! ... were he to die, not a soul would
regret his loss. His own fate therefore concerned him little--he
could handle fire recklessly and not feel the flame; he could, so
he believed, run any risk, and yet escape, comparatively free of
harm.