Lower down, the long, loose slit of the purple muslin tunic was open as far as the hips. Through the gaping drapery, Demetrios slowly passed his hand, and his united finger-tips touched the curves of her left breast, damp with perspiration. Its nipple rose erect in the palm of his hand. Notwithstanding, Touni slept on.
Her dream gradually changed, but did not fade. Her breath came quicker through her half open lips and she murmured a long, unintelligible sentence, as her fevered head fell back once more.
With the same stealthy tenderness, Demetrios withdrew his hot hand, to let it be refreshed by the light breeze.
She was asleep.... dreaming peacefully.
From the vague outline of the blue garden slopes as far as the immense scintillation of the night, shuddered the eternal sea. Like unto another bosom of some fresh priestess, its undulations were swelling heavenwards, uplifted by the dreams of antiquity that still cause it to thrill in the sight of our belated glances. When the end of all things is nigh, the last living beings will try before they disappear to fathom the mysteries of the moving ocean.
The moon inclined her great goblet of blood over the waters. Far away, in the purest atmosphere that had ever united heaven and earth, a slight red trail, where black veins meandered, trembled on the surface of the waves beneath the rising orb of night, as when the agitation of a caress on a rounded breast, in the dead of night, remains long after the hand that caused it has been lifted.
Touni still slumbered, her head leaning backwards, her body well-nigh naked, enshrouded in tinted muslin folds.
The purple glare of the moon, as yet on the horizon, came over the sea towards the sleeping woman. The fatal, vivid rays lit her up with a flame that seemed immobile. Little by little, their brilliancy mounted, encircling the Egyptian girl. Her black curls appeared one by one, and finally the Comb flashed out of the darkness: the royal Comb that Chrysis coveted. The ivory diadem was now bathed in the glory of the crimson moonbeams.
It was then that the sculptor took Touni’s sweet face in both his hands, turning her features towards his own. Her eyes opened and became dilated.