XXXIXLystra had spent the early evening getting ready for her lover. Her mute slave-girls, who were safe because she had had them made dumb, had worked on their mistress since the late afternoon so that she might be lovely in the eyes of Medrawt.
They had annointed her olive-skinned body with sweet oils, from Persia and far India, stroking and massaging it into her lean flanks and her rounded thighs. They had smoothed the soles of her feet with pumice, and had trimmed and painted the nails of her feet and hands with gold. While her full breasts were still faintly damp with sweet oil, they had dusted them with fine silver, so that she looked more like a goddess in an Eastern temple than a living woman.
When they had redyed her black hair and painted her eyes blue and her broad lips scarle
