t the skin and the whole mass
of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from some kind of
fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's window might
glow when you were standing full in front of it and the gas was turned
on to full height behind. Every feature--brow, nose, lips, chin, even
the eyes themselves, and their very pupils, seemed to be pervaded and
permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for the beholder to
avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits of
flame--salamandrines--who sometimes existed out of their own element and
lived and moved as mortals.

"Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not
conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself,
and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped
upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!--I
would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain
whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human
calculation!

"Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and
there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me
nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been
fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to
myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and
that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features
and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the
expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation
of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her
place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely,
and decidedly:

"'You are here again! what do you want?'

"'I come to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,'
answered Von Berg, 'who wishes--'

"'Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an
unmistakably hissing sound. 'He wants nothing, and he is _not_ the Baron
Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would
not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him
away--go away yourself--and never let me see you again unless you have
something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!'

"'But--' began Von Berg.

"'Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you
repent having come at