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Updated: June 19, 2025
To Theos's imagination it looked a creature more sorrowful than fierce, a poor charmed brute, that while netted in the drowsy woofs of its mistress Lysia's magnetic spell, seemed as though it dimly wondered why it should thus be raised aloft for the adoration of infatuated humankind.
His grief for her death had been a mere transient emotion, . . his stronger earthly passions re-asserted their tempestuous sway, and for sweet things perished and gone to heaven he had no further care. On Lysia, and on Lysia's living beauty alone, his eyes flamed their ardent glory.
Nir jahs was by no means sober, but he had recovered a little of his self-possession since Lysia's sleepy eyes had darted such cold contempt upon him, and he seemed for the present to be on his guard against giving any further possible cause of offence. "Thou art a new comer, a stranger, if I mistake not?" he inquired in a low, abrupt, yet kindly tone.
Singing unsteadily, with the empty goblet upside-down in his hand, he looked up laughing, his bright eyes flashing with a wild feverish fire, his fair hair tossed back from his brows and entangled in a half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves, his rich garments disordered, his whole demeanor that of one possessed by a semi-delirium of sensuous pleasure...when all at once, meeting Lysia's keen glance, he started as though he had been suddenly stabbed, the goblet fell from his clasp, and a visible shudder ran through his strong, supple frame.
The cithern-playing had now the soothing softness of a mother's lullaby to a tired child, and as the liquid notes quavered delicately on the otherwise deep stillness, the formidable reptile began to coil itself ascendingly round and round the ebony rod, . . higher and higher, one glistening ring after another, higher still, till its eyes were on a level with the "Eye of Raphon" that flamed on Lysia's breast, . . there it paused in apparent reflectiveness, and seemed to listen to the slumberous strains that floated toward it in wind-like breaths of sound, . . then, starting afresh on its upward way, it carefully, and with almost human tenderness, avoided touching Lysia's hand, which now rested on the staff between two thick twists of its body, . . and finally it reached the top, where fully raising its crested head, it displayed the prismatic tints of its soft, restless, wavy throat, which was adorned furthermore by a flexible circlet of magnificent diamonds.
Bewildered and overcome with unspeakable dread, he drew his dagger he would at least, he thought, put the tortured sufferer out of his misery, ... but scarcely had his weapon left the sheath, when Lysia's clear, cold voice exclaimed: "Disarm him!" and with the silent rapidity of a lightning-flash, Gazra glided to his side, and the steel was snatched from his hand.
Scarcely had he done so, when with a savage scream he fell prone on the ground, his limbs twisted in acute agony, his features hideously contorted, his hands beating the air wildly, as though in contention with some invisible foe, ..while in strange and terrible dissonance with his tortured cries, Lysia's laughter, musically mellow, broke out in little quick peals, like the laughter of a very young child.
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