ase was loaded with a mass of exotic
poppies, a riotous splash of color; whilst beside this vase, and
slightly in front of the pedestal, stood the figure presumably intended
to represent the Lady of the Poppies who gave title to the picture.

The figure was that of an Eastern girl, slight and supple, and
possessing a devilish and forbidding grace. Her short hair formed a
black smudge upon the canvas, and cast a dense shadow upon her face.
The composition was infinitely daring; for out of this shadow shone the
great black eyes, their diablerie most cunningly insinuated; whilst with
a brilliant exclusion of detail--by means of two strokes of the brush
steeped in brightest vermilion, and one seemingly haphazard splash of
dead white--an evil and abandoned smile was made to greet the spectator.

To the waist, the figure was a study in satin nudity, whence, from a
jeweled girdle, light draperies swept downward, covering the feet and
swinging, a shimmering curve out into the foreground of the canvas, the
curve being cut off in its apogee by the gold frame.

Above her head, this girl of demoniacal beauty held a bunch of poppies
seemingly torn from the vase: this, with her left hand; with her right
she pointed, tauntingly, at her beholder.

In comparison with the effected futurism of the other pictures in the
studio, "Our Lady of the Poppies," beyond question was a great painting.
From a point where the entire composition might be taken in by the eye,
the uncanny scene glowed with highly colored detail; but, exclude the
scheme of the composition, and focus the eye upon any one item--the
golden dragon--the seated Chinaman--the ebony door--the silk-shaded
lamp; it had no detail whatever: one beheld a meaningless mass of
colors. Individually, no one section of the canvas had life, had
meaning; but, as a whole, it glowed, it lived--it was genius. Above all,
it was uncanny.

This, Denise Ryland fully realized, but critics had grown so used to
treating the work of Olaf van Noord as a joke, that "Our Lady of the
Poppies" in all probability would never be judged seriously.

"What does it mean, Mr. van Noord?" asked Helen Cumberly, leaving the
group of worshipers standing hushed in rapture before the canvas and
approaching the painter. "Is there some occult significance in the
title?"

"It is a priestess," replied the artist, in his dreamy fashion....

"A priestess?"

"A priestess of the temple."...

Helen Cumberly glanced ag