The book-lined wall behind him was unbroken by any opening.
Slowly, as a man awaking from a stupor, Soames gazed around the library.
It contained no door.
He rested his hand upon one of the shelves and closed his eyes. Beyond
doubt he was going mad! The tragic events of that night had proved too
much for him; he had never disguised from himself the fact that his
mental capacity was not of the greatest. He was assured, now, that
his brain had lost its balance shortly after his flight from Palace
Mansions, and that the events of the past two hours had been phantasmal.
He would presently return to sanity (or, blasphemously, he dared to
petition heaven that he would) and find himself...? Perhaps in the hands
of the police!
"Oh, God!" he groaned--"Oh, God!"
He opened his eyes...
A woman stood before the sandalwood screen! She had the pallidly dusky
skin of a Eurasian, but, by virtue of nature or artifice, her cheeks
wore a peachlike bloom. Her features were flawless in their chiseling,
save for the slightly distended nostrils, and her black eyes were
magnificent.
She was divinely petite, slender and girlish; but there was that in
the lines of her figure, so seductively defined by her clinging Chinese
dress, in the poise of her small head, with the blush rose nestling
amid the black hair--above all in the smile of her full red lips--which
discounted the youth of her body; which whispered "Mine is a soul old
in strange sins--a soul for whom dead Alexandria had no secrets, that
learnt nothing of Athenean Thais and might have tutored Messalina".
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