And is that glyptodon
salad?"
St. George's eyes were upon the guests, so tranquilly seated, aware
of the hour.
"I fancy," he said in half-voice, "that presently we shall see
little flames issuing from their hair, as there used from the hair
of the ladies in Werner's ballets."
Then as Balator leaned toward him in his splendid leisure, fostering
his charm, there came an amazing interruption.
The low key of the room was electrically raised by a cry, loosed
from some other plight of being, like an odour of burning
encroaching upon a garden.
"Why have you not waited?" some one called, and the voice--clear,
equal, imperious--evened its way upon the air and reduced to itself
the soft speech of the others. Silence fell upon them all, and
their eyes were toward a figure standing in the open interval of the
room--a figure whose aspect thrilled St. George with sudden,
inexplicable emotion.
It was an old man, incredibly old, so that one thought first of his
age. His beard and hair were not all grey, but he had grotesquely
brown and wrinkled flesh.
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