She turned them
upon Ventnor, they brooded upon him; within their depths
a half-troubled interest, a questioning.
A smile dawned upon the exquisite face, humanizing it,
transfiguring it, touching with tenderness the sweet and
sleeping mouth--as a hovering dream the lips of the
slumbering maid.
And on the face of Ruth, as upon a mirror, I watched
that same slow, understanding tenderness reflected!
"Come," said Norhala, and led the way through the
sparkling curtains. As she passed, an arm around Ruth's
neck, I saw the marks of Ventnor's fingers upon her white
shoulder, staining its purity, marring it like a blasphemy.
For an instant I hung behind, watching their figures
grow misty within the shining shadows; then followed
hastily. Entering the mists I was conscious of a pleasant
tingling, an acceleration of the pulse, an increase of that
sense of well-being which, I grew suddenly aware, had
since the beginning of our strange journey minimized the
nervous attrition of constant contact with the abnormal.
Striving to classify, to reduce to order, my sensations
I drew close to the others, overtaking them in a dozen
paces. A dozen paces more and we stepped out of the
curtainings.
CHAPTER XI
THE METAL
EMPEROR
We stood at the edge of a well whose walls were of
that same green vaporous iridescence through which we
had just come, but finer grained, compact; as though here
the corpuscles of which they were woven were far closer
spun.
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