daughter of Herodias raised her
hands as though, engaged for ever in a mystic rite, to invoke outlandish
gods. Her face was very pale, and her dark eyes were sleepless; the
jewels of her girdle gleamed with sombre fires; and her dress was of
colours that have long been lost. The smile, in which was all the sorrow
of the world and all its wickedness, beheld the wan head of the Saint,
and with a voice that was cold with the coldness of death she murmured
the words of the poet:

'I am amorous of thy body, Iokanaan! Thy body is white like the lilies of
a field that the mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white like the snows
that lie on the mountains of Judea, and come down into the valleys. The
roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are not so white as thy body.
Neither the roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia, the garden of
spices of the Queen of Arabia, nor the feet of the dawn when they light
on the leaves, nor the breast of the moon when she lies on the breast of
the sea... There is nothing in the world so white as thy body. Suffer me
to touch thy body.'

Oliver Haddo ceased to play. Neither of them stirred. At last Margaret
sought by an effort to regain her self-control.

'I shall begin to think that you really are a magician,' she said,
lightly.

'I could show you strange things if you cared to see them,' he answered,
again raising his eyes to hers.

'I don't think you will ever get me to believe in occult philosophy,'
she laughed.

'Yet it reigned in Persia with the magi, it endowed India with wonderful
traditions, it civilised Greece to the sounds of Orpheus's lyre.'

He stood before Margaret, towering over her in his huge bulk; and there
was a singular fascination in his gaze. It seemed that he spoke only to
conceal from her that he was putting forth now all the power that was in
him.

'It concealed the first principles of science in the calculations of
Pythagoras. It established empires by its oracles, and at its voice
tyrants grew pale upon their thrones. It governed the minds of some by
curiosity, and others it ruled by fear.'

His voice grew very low, and it was so seductive that Margaret's brain
reeled. The sound of it was overpowering like too sweet a fragrance.

I tell you that for this art nothing is impossible. It commands the
elements, and knows the language of the stars, and directs the planets
in their courses. The moon at its bidding falls blood-red from the sky.
The dead rise u