She was intoxicated with their beauty. She wished him to
continue, but had not the strength to speak. As if he guessed her
thought, he went on, and now his voice had a richness in it as of an
organ heard afar off. It was like an overwhelming fragrance and she could
hardly bear it.
'She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she
has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has
been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and
trafficked for strange evils with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was
the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and
all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives
only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments,
and tinged the eyelids and the hands.'
Oliver Haddo began then to speak of Leonardo da Vinci, mingling with his
own fantasies the perfect words of that essay which, so wonderful was his
memory, he seemed to know by heart. He found exotic fancies in the
likeness between Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving
hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile.
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