"Come hither, Papave, and loose these veils," she cried in a shrill,
thin voice.
Papave advanced, and with a look of awe upon her handsome face began the
task. She was not a tall woman, yet as she bent over her I noted that
she seemed to tower above her mistress, the Hesea.
The outer veils fell revealing more within. These fell also, and now
before us stood the mummy-like shape, although it seemed to be of less
stature, of that strange being who had met us in the Place of Bones. So
it would seem that our mysterious guide and the high priestess Hes were
the same.
Look! Length by length the wrappings sank from her. Would they
never end? How small grew the frame within? She was very short now,
unnaturally short for a full-grown woman, and oh! I grew sick at heart.
The last bandages uncoiled themselves like shavings from a stick;
two wrinkled hands appeared, if hands they could be called. Then the
feet--once I had seen such on the mummy of a princess of Egypt, and even
now by some fantastic play of the mind, I remembered that on her coffin
this princess was named "The Beautiful."
Everything was gone now, except a shift and a last inner veil about the
head. Hes waved back the priestess Papave, who fell half fainting to
the ground and lay there covering her eyes with her hand. Then uttering
something like a scream she gripped this veil in her thin talons, tore
it away, and with a gesture of uttermost despair, turned and faced us.
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