bell quivered musically through the scented air of
the ante-room. Madame de Medici stirred slightly upon the divan with its
many silken cushions, turning her head toward the closed door with the
languorous, almost insolent, indifference which one perceives in the
movements of a tigress. Below, in the lobby, where the pillars of
Mokattam alabaster upheld the painted roof, the little yellow man from
Pekin shivered slightly, although the air was warm for Limehouse, and
always turned his mysterious eyes toward a corner of the great staircase
which was visible from where he sat, coiled up, a lonely figure in the
mushrabiyeh chair. Madame blew a wreath of smoke from her lips, and,
through half-closed eyes, watched it ascend, unbroken, toward the canopy
of cloth-of-gold which masked the ceiling. A Madonna by Leonardo da
Vinci faced her across the apartment, the painted figure seeming to
watch the living one upon the divan. Madame smiled into the eyes of the
Madonna. Surely even the great Leonardo must have failed to reproduce
that smile--the great Leonardo whose supreme art has captured the smile
of Mona Lisa. Madame had the smile of Cleopatra, which, it is said, made
Caesar mad, though in repose the beauty of Egypt's queen left him
cold. A robe of Kashmiri silk, fine with a phantom fineness, draped her
exquisite shape as the art of Cellini draped the classic figures which
he wrought in gold and silver; it seemed incorporate with her beauty.

A second wreath of smoke curled upward to the canopy, and Madame watched
this one also through the veil of her curved black lashes, as the
Eastern woman watches the world through her veil. Those eyes were
notable even in so lovely a setting, for they were of a hue rarely seen
in human eyes, being like the eyes of a tigress; yet they could seem
voluptuously soft, twin pools of liquid amber, in whose depths a man
might lose his soul.

Again the silver bell sounded in the ante-room, and, below, the little
yellow man shivered sympathetically. Again Madame stirred with that high
disdain that so became her, who had the eyes of a tigress. Her carmine
lips possessed the antique curve which we are told distinguished the
lips of the Comtesse de Cagliostro; her cheeks had the freshness of
flowers, and her hair the blackness of ebony, enhancing the miracle of
her skin, which had the whiteness of ivory--not of African ivory, but
of that fossil ivory which has lain for untold ages beneath the snows of