CHAPTER XIV
A VAULT, like the vault of a sepulchre—human heads so closely crowded as to produce the effect of clods of a freshly ploughed field. All faces turned to one point: to the source of a light, as mild as God. Candles burnt with sword—Like flames. Slender, lustrous swords of light stood in a circle around the head of a girl.
Freder stood pressed into the background of the arch—so far from the girl that he perceived of her face nothing but the shimmer of its pallor, the wonder of the eyes and the blood-red mouth. His eyes hung upon this blood-red mouth as though it were the middle point of the earth, to which, by eternal law, his blood must pour down. Tantalising was this mouth...All the seven Deadly Sins had such a mouth...The woman on the scarlet-coloured beast, who bore the nam
