She stretched out one arm, keeping Ten Euyck at the tips of her fingers. He seemed content to stay so, looking at her.
She was dressed in a trailing gown of silken tissue that was now gold, now silver, as the light took it; but the long vaporous slip beneath was of pale rose; molded to her motion and stirring with her breath, there dwelt in the gauze which covered her a perpetual faint flush. The stuffs were cut as low about the breast as if she had been some social queen, and her fair, pale arms were bare of gloves. Their adorable young flatness below the gleam of the slim, smooth shoulders, was now shimmered over and now revealed by short fringes of silver and gold, of cooler colored amber and crystal, which were their only sleeve; and these fringes hung about the borders of her gown and trembled into music as she moved. In the high-piled softness of her hair, diamonds glimmered like stars in a fair dusk; diamonds banded her brow in an inverted crescent; diamonds and topaz dropped in long pendants from her ears; diamonds and pearls clung round her arms; the restored necklace drooped down her breast, and the peep and shine of jewels glanced from her everywhere like glow-worms. She seemed to be clothed in fluctuant light, and yet it could not dim one radiance of her beauty. This was more than newly crowned; the rose was fully open; her loveliness had spread its folded wings and come into its own. There was no shyness now in those wide eyes; her spirit shone there, all in arms, and moved with a new and deeper strength in her young body. Very faintly, on the pure and delicate oval of her cheek, burned the soft, hot stain of rouge. This was the reality of the dear ghost, calling in the night with the rain upon its face; this was the pale girl in the gray suit who had once sat beside her mother in the corner of the coroner's office. It may be Ten Euyck thought of this; it may be she did.
"Well," she said, "have I made myself fine? Do I please you?"
He broke from his trance, took the lamp out of her hold, set it on the mantelshelf, and returned to her without a word.
"Pray speak!" she said; "I am all yours!"
"Christina!" he broke out, and caught and covered her hand with kisses.
"It is quite true. Do I do you credit?
"Look at me here,
Look at me there,
Criticize me everywhere—"
He leaned toward her and she swayed past him to the piano. Over her shoulder she sang to him—
"From head to feet
I am most sweet,
And most perfect and complete!"