THE EQUINOX
sides of the coffin, so that at will it might be made to swing
slowly to and fro.
A heavy rug of black cats’ skin was spread under her, as
if her body, gleaming now like moonstone, now like amber,
would coax electric sparks from the fur.
Wonderful was the body of the woman; she changed ever
as she lay. She outran the gamut of all music and flowers
and jewels and soft words; there is nothing beautiful upon
the earth that she did not resemble. At the sides of the
room stood tall pier-glasses in black frames, cunningly dis-
posed so that from the centre one could see endless avenues
of her beauty, reaching out into infinity.
Even the roof was mirror-clad, so that as she lay upon the
furs she might look upward, and see herself hanging like a
star from the black vault of night.
Beside her in the temple was but one strange image.
Carved of that polished black granite of Egypt, which seems,
as it were, the very bodily form of the Night of Time, there
squatted a god upon his pedestal ; an inscrutable god, smiling,
ever smiling with a smile that spoke unfathomable lust and
cruelty resolved—by what theurgic alchemy ?—into a pure and
passionless bliss. It was a thing eternal as the stars—nay,
before it the very stars might bow as in the reverence of Youth
toage! Yet in it stood a strength and beauty as of golden
youth.
Its skin was polished and shining, not as if reflecting the
guarded light of the electric globes, but as if the very soul of
light—a light too essential to be recognised as light by men—
did inhabit and inform it.
As she lay, the gilded lily, she moved the passionate lips
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