ne are seething? The very lids lift! Amazing,
amazing."

She stretched out her hand towards the vessels as though conjuring them
and said solemnly: "Abundance of happiness; brimming over, brimming
over! Bursting storehouses! Zefa-oo Metramao. Return, return, to the
right levels, the right heights, the right depth, the right measure!
Your Elle Mei-Measurer, Leveller, require them, Techuti, require them,
double Ibis!"

She made them both sit down on elegant seats in front of the boiling
pots, tied the "thread of Anubis" round the ring-finger of each, asked
in a low whisper between muttered words of incantation for a hair of
each, and after placing the hairs both in one cauldron she cried out
with wild vehemence, as though the weal or woe of her two visitors were
involved in the smallest omission:

"Press the finger with the thread of Anubis on your heart; fix your
eyes on the cauldron and the steam which rises to the spirits above, the
spirits of light, the great One on high!"

The two women obeyed the sorceress' directions with beating hearts,
while she began spinning round on her toes with dizzy rapidity; her
curls flew out, and the magic wand in her extended hand described a
large and beautiful curve. Suddenly, and as if stricken by terror, she
stopped her whirl, and at the same instant the lamps went out and
the only light was from the stars and the twinkling coals under the
cauldrons. The low music died away, and a fresh strong perfume welled
out from behind the curtain.

Medea fell on her knees, lifted up her hands to Heaven, threw her head
so far back that her whole face was turned up to the sky and her eyes
gazed straight up at the stars-an attitude only possible to so supple a
spine. In this torturing attitude she sang one invocation after another,
to the zenith of the blue vault over their heads, in a clear voice of
fervent appeal. Her body was thrown forward, her mass of hair no longer
stood up but was turned towards the two young women, who every moment
expected that the supplicant would be suffocated by the blood mounting
to her head, and fall backwards; but she sang and sang, while her white
teeth glittered in the starlight that fell straight upon her face.
Presently, in the midst of the torrent of demoniacal names and magic
formulas that she sang and warbled out, a piteous and terrifying sound
came from behind the curtain as of two persons gasping, sighing,
and moaning: one voice seemed to be that of