It was as if a mask were
slowly to dissolve and yet to lie upon the features which it had
covered, revealing while it still made mock of concealing. Colour
was in the lips, colour was stealing into the changed face. The
_changed_ face--changed, St. George could not tell how; and the
longer he looked, and though he rubbed his eyes and turned them
toward the dark and then looked again, moving the taper, he could
neither explain nor define what had happened.
He set the candle on the floor and sprang away from the quiet
figure, searching the dark. The great silent place, with its
shoulders of sarcophagi jutting from the gloom was black save for
the little ring of pallid light about that prostrate form. St.
George sent his hand to his forehead, and shook himself a bit, and
straightened his shoulders with a smile.
"It must be the stuff you've tasted," he addressed himself solemnly.
"Heaven knows what it was. It's the stuff you've tasted."
Though he had barely touched his lips to the rock-crystal vase St.
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