Suddenly, like the blood-curdling cry of a savage desert-dweller, the high-pitched call of Tutīya thrilled the heated frames of the expectant onlookers.
Instantly the harpers, in a soft and minor key, commenced an air at once slow in measure, plaintive and sad, an air that sounded distant amid the confused murmur of a thousand voices, the clatter of dishes and the distant tap-tap of the butlers’ hurrying sandals.
The shrill cry of Tutīya had brought two of the three women to their feet. Dropping the cloaks that had enveloped them, they took their places at some distance in front of the third figure.
Turning toward the royal dais the two dancers sank down in a slowly executed courtesy, until the nodding lotus-flowers that wreathed their curling wigs swept the flower-strewn floor below him.
Then, in answer to Pharaoh’s scarcely perceptible acknowledgment, slowly they rose upon their slender feet and, with a “life and health, lords” placed themselves once more beside the still motionless central figure.
All eyes were centered upon this well-cloaked figure. It, too, now rose.
Was it motionless? It called to mind the birth of some glorious butterfly or moth. The undulating movement that one sees in the soon to be discarded shell best described the bursting of Nōfert-āri upon the delighted vision of her audience as, shivering with the peculiar motion seen but in those creatures of a day, she suddenly dropped the dull-brown cloak that enveloped her, and appeared fresh and smiling to their view.
In the dancer Nōfert-āri we see a slim, though willowy form, a form and countenance that represented the very arch-type of all that an Egyptian held beautiful in women. A pair of sparkling eyes, elongated, obliquely set, gleamed in frames of blue-black antimony, which served to accentuate the striking whiteness in which swam their fathomless pupils.
On Nōfert-āri’s head was set a dark brown wig which, covered thickly as it was with a myriad little knots and curls, dropped in well-regulated layers until it grazed the tips of her thin and high-set shoulders. This dainty perruque, fringing with its line of dancing curls a forehead that rivaled polished jasper, and touching as it did at every move and gesture the outer pencilings of her shaven and thickly kohl-stained eyebrows, seemed to soften the rather prominent cheekbones and perhaps too pointed chin. The quiver of her wide though delicate nostrils, bespoke a passionate nature, which the faintest of dimples and the ivory flash of small though regular teeth, did their best to contradict. The dancer’s full round throat, her arms, wrists, and well-formed bust, were ablaze with jewels, amid which pale green beryl, dew-like crystal, rose carnelian, gold, electrum and silver, gleamed in opulent splendor, as her bosom rose and fell.
As she stood, a pale blue lotus drooping above each hidden ear, a jeweled menat in one hand, her coffee-colored and well oiled skin agleam with the reflected light of innumerable prismatic colors, she seemed less an animated human form than a figure carved, by Ptah the god of sculptors himself, from a block of glowing opal.