A strange look crossed Sada's face.
"Ay," she answered. "Slaves, who shall die in bondage."
She led Eldris from the room across a small and ill-paved court to another door.
"You will find her here," she said, and pushed Eldris gently across the threshold.
The room was lighted by many lamps, some of pottery of the cheapest sort, others of wrought bronze, and was filled with a strange and subtle perfume. There was a confusion of furniture, and the walls were hung with curtains, which gave the place a bizarre and Eastern look. So much Eldris took in with her first step forward. Then she saw a figure seated upon a mattress on the floor, a fat and shapeless figure, bunched in many garments. Atop of the fat figure was a fat face, with thin hair whose natural gray showed through its ruddy dye, with flabby painted cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes darkened beneath with antimony. A Greek might have called it the face of a Greek, and looked again to make sure; a Roman might have called it the face of a Roman. In it one seemed to catch a hint, mysterious and elusive, of all ages and all nations. Once it had been a fine face; even, in a time long past, it had been touched with beauty. Now it was at once a relic and a monument. The substance was the same, but transmuted into coarser mould. Where had been soft blue tracings were red and angry veins; where had been gracious roundness was gross fleshiness. Only the brow, God-made, the only feature which may be neither made nor marred by human means, remained the same, broad and white, and smooth as marble.
The woman sat perfectly motionless, looking at nothing. On her fat hands, which rested on her knees, were rings set with blazing stones; on every finger a ring, and on every ring a slender chain which led back over the hand to a heavy wristlet of gold in which a great ruby burned. Her garments were held by fibulæ of iron and bone, cheaply made; around her neck were many strings of beads, some of carved jet, some of silver, some of colored glass. In her grotesqueness and impassivity she might have posed as a graven goddess of some unholy rite. In the sight of her, also, was something so unexpected that Eldris stopped and stared.
"Will you close that door?" said the woman. Her voice was low-pitched and clear and very sweet, with no hint of coarseness in its modulations. Coming from such a bulk it was surprising—more, it was startling. Eldris obeyed, taken wholly aback. "Now come hither."
Eldris came.
The woman's heavy-lidded eyes settled on her as a vulture settles on its prey, devouring her, line by line, feature by feature, until, to her surprise and discomfort, Eldris felt herself flushing as though she had been under the eyes of a man.
"Whence come you?" said the soft voice; so commonplace a question and so casually asked, that Eldris was nearly betrayed into indiscretion. She caught herself and said instead: