icate tints which sometimes streak the inside of a shell. Though tall
she seemed as light as if she had been an embodied cloud, hovering over
the rich carpets like a child that does not feel the weight of its body;
and though stately in the intervals of rest, her mirth was a sort of
rapture. She, too, had that peculiar luxuriousness of aspect, in no
degree opposed to modesty, which belongs to the East: around her lips
was wreathed, in their stillness, an expression at once pleasurable and
pathetic, which seemed ever ready to break forth into a smile: her hands
seemed to leave with regret whatever they had rested on, and in parting
to leave something behind; and in all her soft and witching beauty she
reminded me of Browning's lines--

"No swan-soft woman, rubbed in lucid oils.
The gift of an enamored god, more fair."

As feat succeeded to feat, and enchantment to enchantment, all remnant
of reserve was discarded, and no trace remained of that commingled alarm
and pleased expectation which had characterized those beaming
countenances when first they emerged from their vails. Those fair women
floated around us, and tossed their hands in the air, wholly forgetting
that their husband was by. Still, however, we had made but little
progress in our inquiry; and when the magician informed them that they
had better not try to conceal any thing from him, their only answer was
a look that said, "You came here to give us pleasure, not to
cross-question us." Resolved to use more formidable weapons, he began to
arrange an electrical machine, when the Mollah, after glancing at it two
or three times, approached and asked him whether that instrument also
was supernatural. The quick-witted Frenchman replied at once, "By no
means; it is a mere scientific toy." Then, turning to me, he added, in a
low voice, "He has seen it before--probably, he has traveled." In a few
minutes, the women were ranged in a ring, and linked hand-in-hand. He
then informed them, through our interpreter, that if a discovery was not
immediately made, each person should receive, at the same moment, a blow
from an invisible hand; that, the second time, the admonition would be
yet severer; and that, the third time, if his warning was still
despised, the culprit would drop down dead. This announcement was heard
with much gravity, but no confession followed it: the shock was given,
and the lovely circle was speedily dislinked, "with shrieks and
laughter." Again