At first sight the view within was startling.
The single window of the inner room was heavily curtained with black, excluding every ray of daylight. Above a small square table in the middle of the floor, however, there burned two electric lights enveloped in green globes, the rays from which shed a weird and uncanny light throughout the room.
On the walls were hung numerous astrological charts, a number of horoscopes of celebrated men, more accurately cast after death than before; and along with these were various devices and insignia, of the meaning and object of which Nick was entirely ignorant.
On a stand near the table were several packs of playing-cards, presumably for fortune-telling, if no other amusement.
In other respects the room was well furnished, with a book-case against one wall, a couch opposite, and several small but expensive chairs.
What chiefly startled Nick, however, was less this curious appearance of the room than that of its solitary inmate.
Madame Victoria was seated at the table, a woman under thirty, large of figure, without being corpulent, an attractive, self-reliant face, and an abundance of brownish-red hair done up in picturesque disorder. She was clad in a long purple robe, figured with small silver stars, along with a crescent moon here and there among them, the whole conveying a vague suggestion of a midnight sky. The garment was voluminous, entirely covering her waist and skirts.
From the large, loose sleeves, and in vivid contrast with the rich dark-purple, protruded a pair of shapely bare arms and hands; yet both these and the woman’s face, uplifted when Nick entered, were lent a disagreeable, deathlike pallor by the green light of the room.
Her first glance was at Nick’s left hand, at a valuable carbuncle ring on the third finger, and then her eyes rose up to his face while she abruptly exclaimed, with a curious mingling of vivacity and surprise: