All
the seats faced a great dais at the chamber's far end where three
thrones were set.
But it was the men and women in the great chamber who filled St.
George with wonder. The women--they were beautiful women,
slow-moving, slow-eyed, of soft laughter and sudden melancholy, and
clear, serene profiles and abundant hair. And they were all _alive_,
fully and mysteriously alive, alive to their finger-tips. It was as
if in comparison all other women acted and moved in a kind of
half-consciousness. It was as if, St. George thought vaguely, one
were to step through the frame of a pre-Raphaelite tapestry and
suddenly find its strange women rejoicing in fulfillment instead of
yearning, in noon instead of dusk. As he stood looking down the vast
chamber, all springing columns and light lines lifting through the
honey-coloured air, it smote St. George that these people, instead
of being far away, were all near, surprisingly, unbelievably near to
him,--in a way, nearer to his own elusive personality than he was
himself.
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