The moment the great key entered the lock, Rhodis arrested her friend’s hand:
“I do not know whether I dare see her,” she said. “I loved her well, Myrto . . . I am afraid . . . Go in first, will you?”
Myrtocleia pushed open the door; but as soon as she had cast a glance into the chamber she cried:
“Do not enter, Rhodis! Wait for me here.”
“Oh! What is there? You are afraid too . . . What is there on the bed? Is she not dead?”
“Yes, wait for me . . . I will tell you . . . Stay in the corridor and do not look.”
The body was still in the ecstatic attitude in which Demetrius had arranged it for his Statue of Immortal Life. But the transports of extreme joy confine upon the convulsions of extreme pain, and Myrtocleia asked herself what atrocious sufferings, what agonies had produced such an upheaval in the corpse.
She approached the bed on tiptoe.
The thread of blood continued to flow from the diaphanous nostril. The skin of the body was perfectly white; the pale tips of the breasts receded like delicate navels; not a single rose-coloured reflection gave life to the ephemeral recumbent statue; but some emerald-coloured spots that tinted the smooth belly signified that millions of new lives were germinating in the scarcely-cold flesh, and were demanding “the right of succession!”