“She has a very beautiful face. I saw it once.—It is indeed as beautiful as Lona’s!” I added with a sigh.
“Then what makes her hide it?”
“I think I know:—anyhow, she has some good reason for it!”
“I don’t like the cat-woman! she is frightful!”
“You cannot like, and you ought not to dislike what you have never seen.—Once more, you must not call her the cat-woman!”
“What are we to call her then, please?”
“Lady Mara.”
“That is a pretty name!” said a girl; “I will call her ‘lady Mara’; then perhaps she will show me her beautiful face!”
Mara, drest and muffled in white, was indeed standing in the doorway to receive us.
“At last!” she said. “Lilith’s hour has been long on the way, but it is come! Everything comes. Thousands of years have I waited—and not in vain!”