"Smith, Clark Ashton - Tales of Averoigne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

evidently belonged to the period of Greek decadence, with its
intermingling of Oriental influences. I was led through a hallway
gIeaming with onyx and polished porphyry, into an opulently furnished
room, where, on a couch of gorgeous fabrics, there reclined a woman
of goddess-like beauty.
At sight of her, I trembled from head to foot with the violence of a
strange emotion. I had heard of the sudden mad loves by which men
are seized on beholding for the first time a certain face and form; but
never before had I experienced a passion of such intensity, such all-
consuming ardor, as the one I conceived immediately for this woman.
Indeed, it seemed as if I had loved her for a long time, without knowing
that it was she whom I loved, and without being able to identify the
nature of my enotion or to orient the feeling in any manner.
She was not tall, but was formed with exquisite voluptuous purity of
line and contour. Her eyes were of a dark sapphire blue, with molten
depths into which the soul was fain to plunge as into the soft abysses of
a summer ocean. The curve of her lips was enigmatic, a little mournful,. __
and gravely tender as the lips of an antique Venus. Her hair, brownish
rather than blond, fell over her neck and ears and forehead in delicious
ripples confined by a plain fillet of silver. In her expression, there was a
mixture of pride and voluptuousness, of regal imperiousness and
feminine yielding. Her moverneats were all as efFortless and graceful as
those of a serpent.
'I knew you would come,' she murmured in the same softvoweled
Greek I had heard from the lips of her servants. 'I have waited for you
long; but when you sought refuge from the storm in the abbey of
Perigon, and saw the manuscript in the secret drawer, I knew that the
hour of your arrival was at hand. Ah! you did not dream that the spell
which drew you so irresistibly, with such unaccountable potency, was
the spell of my beauty, the magical allurement of my love!'
'Who are you?' I queried. I spoke readily in Greek, which would
have surprised me greatly an hour before. But now, I was prepared to
accept anything whatever, no matter how fantastic or preposterous, as
part of the miraculous fortune, the unbelievable adventure which had
befallen me.
'I am Nycea,' she replied to my question. 'I love you, and the
hospitality of my palace and of my arms is at your disposal. Need you
know anything nore?'
The slaves had disappeared. I flung myself beside the couch and
kissed the hand she ofered me, pouring out protestations that were no
doubt incoherent, but were nevertheless full of an ardor that made her
smile tenderly. Her hand was cool to my lips, but the touch of it fired
my passion. I ventured to seat myself beside her on the couch, and she
did not deny my familiarity. While a soft purple twilight began to fill
the corners of the chamber, we conversed happily, saying over and over
again all the sweet absurd litanies, all the felicitous nothings that come
instinctively to the lips of lovers. She was incredibly soft in my arms,
and it seemed almost as if the completeness of her yielding was
unhindered by the presence of bones in her lovely body.
The servants entered noiselessly, lighting rich lamps of intricately