He recoiled suddenly with a violent start, for there, like a
strange Spirit of Evil risen from the ground, leaning against the
great gold sarcophagus, her exquisite form scarcely concealed by
the misty white of her draperies, her dark hair hanging like a
cloud over her shoulders, and her black eyes aflame with wrath,
menace and passion, stood the mysterious Ziska!




CHAPTER XVI.


Stricken dumb with a ghastly supernatural terror which far
exceeded any ordinary sense of fear, he gazed at her, spellbound,
his blood freezing, his very limbs stiffening, for now--now she
looked like the picture he had painted of her; and Death--Death,
livid, tortured and horrible, stared at him skull-wise from the
transparent covering of her exquisitely tinted seeming-human
flesh. Larger and brighter and wilder grew her eyes as she fixed
them on him, and her voice rang through the silence with an
unearthly resonance as she spoke and said:

"Welcome, my lover, to this abode of love! Welcome to these arms,
for whose embraces your covetous soul has thirsted unappeased!
Take all of me, for I am yours!--aye, so truly yours that you can
never escape me!--never separate from me--no! not through a
thousand thousand centuries! Life of my life! Soul of my soul!
Possess me, as I possess you!--for our two unrepenting spirits