About this seated personage there was an air of singular majesty, such as might pervade a queen as fancy paints her, though she had a nobler figure than any queen I ever saw depicted.  Mystery seemed to flow from her; it clothed her like the veil she wore, which of course heightened the effect.  Beauty flowed from her also; although it was shrouded I knew that it was there, no veil or coverings could obscure it—­at least, to my imagination.  Moreover she breathed out power also; one felt it in the air as one feels a thunderstorm before it breaks, and it seemed to me that this power was not quite human, that it drew its strength from afar and dwelt a stranger to the earth.

To tell the truth, although my curiosity, always strong, was enormously excited and though now I felt glad that I had attempted this journey with all its perils, I was horribly afraid, so much afraid that I should have liked to turn and run away.  From the beginning I knew myself to be in the presence of an unearthly being clothed in soft and perfect woman’s flesh, something alien, too, and different from our human race.

What a picture it all made!  There she sat, quiet and stately as a perfect marble statue; only her breast, rising and falling beneath the white robe, showed that she was alive and breathed as others do.  Another thing showed it also—­her eyes.  At first I could not see them through the veil, but presently either because I grew accustomed to the light, or because they brightened as those of certain animals have power to do when they watch intently, it ceased to be a covering to them.  Distinctly I saw them now, large and dark and splendid with a tinge of deep blue in the iris; alluring and yet awful in their majestic aloofness which seemed to look through and beyond, to embrace all without seeking and without effort.  Those eyes were like windows through which light flows from within, a light of the spirit.

I glanced round to see the effect of this vision upon my companions.  It was most peculiar.  Hans had sunk to his knees; his hands were joined in the attitude of prayer and his ugly little face reminded me of that of a big fish out of water and dying from excess of air.  Robertson, startled out of his abstraction, stared at the royal-looking woman on the couch with his mouth open.

“Man,” he whispered, “I’ve got them back although I have touched nothing for weeks, only this time they are lovely.  For yon’s no human lady, I feel it in my bones.”

Umslopogaas stood great and grim, his hands resting on the handle of his tall axe; and he stared also, the blood pulsing against the skin that covered the hole in his head.

“Watcher-by-Night,” he said to me in his deep voice, but also speaking in a whisper, “this chieftainess is not one woman, but all women.  Beneath those robes of hers I seem to see the beauty of one who has ‘gone Beyond,’ of the Lily who is lost to me.  Do you not feel it thus, Macumazahn?”