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I have put my
heart away from such vanity as woman's loveliness, that passeth like a
flower."
"Nay, thou errest," she said; "that does _not_ pass. My beauty endures
even as I endure; still, if thou wilt, oh rash man, have thy will; but
blame not me if passion mount thy reason, as the Egyptian breakers used
to mount a colt, and guide it whither thou wilt not. Never may the man
to whom my beauty has been unveiled put it from his mind, and therefore
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.


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