The daughters of the twenty peers of Yaque! Of course they were
to be considered. Why should he fear that, because Olivia was in
Yaque, the mere mention of a betrothal referred to Olivia? He was
bold enough to smile at his fears, to smile even when, as the prince
ceased speaking, the music sounded again, as it were from the air,
in a chorus of pure young voices with a ripple of unknown strings in
accompaniment.
Suddenly, at the opening of great doors, a flood of saffron light
was poured upon a stair, and at the summit appeared the leisurely
head of a procession which the two men were destined never to
forget. Across the gallery and down the stair--it might have been
the Golden Stair linking Near with Far--came a score of exquisite
women in all the glory of their youth, of perfect physical beauty
and splendid strength and fullness of life; and the wonder was not
their beauty more than a kind of dryad delicacy of that beauty,
which was yet not frailty but a look of angelic strength. But they
were not remote--they were gloriously human, almost, one would say,
divinely human, all gentle movement and warmth and tender breath.
Pages:
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240