CHAPTER XXI
While Dimitrius thus perplexed himself with a psychological question for which he could find no satisfactory answer, Diana was happily free from doubts and fears of any kind whatsoever. When she found herself alone in her rooms she was conscious of a strange sense of sovereignty and supremacy which, though it was in a manner new to her, yet did not seem unnatural. She was not in the least conscious of having passed four days, practically, in a state of suspended animation, no more, perhaps, than is the Indian fakir who suffers himself to be buried in the earth for a sufficient time to allow the corn to grow over him. She looked about her, recognising certain familiar objects which were her own, and others which belonged to the Dimitrius household,—she touched the piano lightly as she passed it,—glanced through the open window at the dusky, starlit skies, and then went into her bedroom, where, turning on the electric burner, she confronted herself in the mirror with a smile. Beauty smiled back at her in every line and curve, in every movement; and she criticised her own appearance as she might have criticised a picture, admiring the sheeny softness and sparkle of the mysterious garment in which she was arrayed. But after a few moments of this quiet self-contemplation, she recollected more mundane things, and going to the wardrobe, took out the rose-pink wrap Sophy Lansing had given her.
“I wonder,” she said, half laughing, “what Sophy would say to me now! But, after all, what a far-away person Sophy seems!”
Standing before the mirror she deliberately let the shining “robe of ordeal” slip from her body to the floor. Nude as a pearl, she remained for a moment, gazing, as she knew, at the loveliest model of feminine perfection ever seen since the sculptor of the Venus de Medici wrought his marble divinity. Yet she was not surprised or elated; no touch of vanity or self-complacency moved her. The astonishing part of the whole matter was that it seemed quite natural to her to be thus beautiful; beauty had become part of her existence, like the simple act of breathing, and called for no special personal notice. She slipped on a few garments, covering all with her rose-silk wrapper, and twisted up her hair. And so she was clothed again as Diana May,—but what a different Diana May! She heard Vasho moving in the sitting-room, and looking, saw that he was setting out a dainty little table with game and fruit and wine. He caught sight of her fair face watching him from the half-open door which divided bedroom from sitting-room, and paused, abashed—then made a sort of Eastern salutation, full of the most abject humility.
“Poor Vasho!” she said, advancing. “How strange that you should be so afraid of me! What do you take me for? You must not be afraid!”
No goddess, suddenly descending from the skies to earth, could have looked more royally beneficent than she, and Vasho made rapid signs of entire devotion to her service.
“No,” she said—“You are your master’s man. He will need your help—when I am gone!”
The negro’s countenance expressed a sudden dismay—and she laughed.
“Yes—when I am gone!” she repeated, “and that will be very soon! I am made for all the world now!”
His eyes rolled despairingly,—he made eloquent and beseeching signs of appeal.