The figure was that of an Eastern girl, slight and supple, and possessing a devilish and forbidding grace.  Her short hair formed a black smudge upon the canvas, and cast a dense shadow upon her face.  The composition was infinitely daring; for out of this shadow shone the great black eyes, their diablerie most cunningly insinuated; whilst with a brilliant exclusion of detail—­by means of two strokes of the brush steeped in brightest vermilion, and one seemingly haphazard splash of dead white—­an evil and abandoned smile was made to greet the spectator.

To the waist, the figure was a study in satin nudity, whence, from a jeweled girdle, light draperies swept downward, covering the feet and swinging, a shimmering curve out into the foreground of the canvas, the curve being cut off in its apogee by the gold frame.

Above her head, this girl of demoniacal beauty held a bunch of poppies seemingly torn from the vase:  this, with her left hand; with her right she pointed, tauntingly, at her beholder.

In comparison with the effected futurism of the other pictures in the studio, “Our Lady of the Poppies,” beyond question was a great painting.  From a point where the entire composition might be taken in by the eye, the uncanny scene glowed with highly colored detail; but, exclude the scheme of the composition, and focus the eye upon any one item—­the golden dragon—­the seated Chinaman—­the ebony door—­the silk-shaded lamp; it had no detail whatever:  one beheld a meaningless mass of colors.  Individually, no one section of the canvas had life, had meaning; but, as a whole, it glowed, it lived—­it was genius.  Above all, it was uncanny.

This, Denise Ryland fully realized, but critics had grown so used to treating the work of Olaf van Noord as a joke, that “Our Lady of the Poppies” in all probability would never be judged seriously.

“What does it mean, Mr. van Noord?” asked Helen Cumberly, leaving the group of worshipers standing hushed in rapture before the canvas and approaching the painter.  “Is there some occult significance in the title?”

“It is a priestess,” replied the artist, in his dreamy fashion....

“A priestess?”

“A priestess of the temple."...

Helen Cumberly glanced again at the astonishing picture.

“Do you mean,” she began, “that there is a living original?”

Olaf van Noord bowed absently, and left her side to greet one who at that moment entered the studio.  Something magnetic in the personality of the newcomer drew all eyes from the canvas to the figure on the threshold.  The artist was removing garish tiger skin furs from the shoulders of the girl—­for the new arrival was a girl, a Eurasian girl.

She wore a tiger skin motor-coat, and a little, close-fitting, turban-like cap of the same.  The coat removed, she stood revealed in a clinging gown of silk; and her feet were shod in little amber colored slippers with green buckles.  The bodice of her dress opened in a surprising V, displaying the satin texture of her neck and shoulders, and enhancing the barbaric character of her appearance.  Her jet black hair was confined by no band or comb, but protruded Bishareen-like around the shapely head.  Without doubt, this was the Lady of the Poppies—­the original of the picture.