Hamilton opened his eyes first, and, lifting his head
from the pillow, looked down upon Saidie still asleep beside him.
In the rich mellow light of the room her loveliness glowed under
his eyes like a jewel held in the sun. He hardly drew his breath,
looking down upon her. Her heavy hair, full of deep purplish
shades, and with the wave in it not unusual in the Asiatic, was
pushed off the pale, pure bronze of the forehead, on which were
drawn so perfectly the long-sweeping Oriental brows. The nose,
delicately straight, with its proud high-arched nostrils, and the
tiny upper lip, led the eye on to the finely-carved Eastern mouth,
of which the lips now were softly, firmly folded in repose. How
exquisitely Nature had fashioned those lips, putting more elaborate
work in those lines and curves of that one feature than in the
whole of an ordinary English face. Hamilton hung over her, filled
with a passion of tenderness, watching the gentle breath move
softly the warm column of bronze throat and raise the soft, full
breast.
Passion, in its highest phase, is indeed the supreme gift of the
gods. In giving it to a mortal for once they forget their envy: for
once they raise him to their level; for that once they grant him
divinity.
Hamilton now marvelled at himself. The whole fruit of his forty
years of life--all that accomplished work, success, wealth,
rewarded worth, satisfied ambition, all the pleasures his youth,
his health and strength, and powers had always brought him, crushed
together--could not equal this: the charm and ecstasy with which he
gazed down on this warm beauty of the flesh beside him.
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