"Aw," said somebody in the second tent.
But in that tent a person stirred. Gregory shouted again. "Be quick, Moll. Light a lantern. The moon's no good to me in these durned trees."
"Wait a minute, can't yer?"
Power picked up the reins and remounted the mare. He had had his fill of the affair, and was riding away. "You're right now," he said to Gregory. "Good night." The gleam of a lantern appeared through the canvas of the tent. "Good night," Power called out a second time. The tent door was pushed aside, and a girl came into the open, holding a lighted lantern above her head.
Power pulled up his beast. The girl that stood there was scantily dressed. Her hair fell down her back. She was very near him, and she held the lantern that she might look him over; but the rays of light fell all about her own head and shoulders. She stared at him, not a whit disturbed at the sudden meeting.
A moment had brought Power face to face with the great experience of his life. The girl's beauty was beyond any imagining. He sat astride the mare with dropped reins, staring at her.
There, in a broken tent, in that forgotten place by the river, was one of those women who have commanded the tears and prayers of men since the world began to turn. The girl stood with the light of the lantern falling about her, with that in the carriage of her head for which a sage would forget his learning, with that in her eyes for which a saint would forego his hope of Paradise, with that in her form for which a poet would break the strings of his lyre. To look a moment on her was to grow hungry, to look long on her was to banish peace.
For that most cunning work of a great craftsman was a chalice holding the poisoned potion of desire; that rich body was an altar whereon burned the fires of longing; that loveliness was doomed to linger as midwife to men's tears. The spirit of all that is untamed made home in that form, and beside it dwelt the spirit of all that shall not find rest. And sight of that fairness brought taste of what man reaches for and may not touch, of what man climbs after to fall from with bruised knees.
Her figure was quick and strong and supple; her hair lay about her head as an aureole; her eyes were great and bright and deep; her feet were slender and without blemish; her lips waited on the coming of some supreme adventure.
Quite suddenly Power found the girl speaking to him. She held her head a little sideways and was looking over him.