Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/44

Rh woman of your acumen, of your experience, of your brilliancy!—to pause and draw back for such puerile after-thoughts—I cannot in the least comprehend it. What a sceptre you hold! Bah! stronger than any queen's. Queens are mere fantoccini—marionnettes crowned for a puppet-show, and hung on wires that each minister pulls after his own fancy; but you have a kingdom that is never limited, except at your own choice; an empire that is exhaustless, for when you shall have lost your beauty, you will still keep your power. You smile, and the politician tells you his secret; you woo him, and the velvet churchman unlocks his intrigues; you use your silver eloquence, and you save a cause or free a country. It is supreme power, the power of a woman's loveliness, used as you use it, with a statesman's skill." She smiled slightly; but the tranquil carelessness and resistance of her attitude did not change. Those persuasive, vivacious, hyperbolic words—she remembered how fatal a magic, how alluring a glamour such as they had once had for her; they had no charm now, they had long ceased to have any.

"A supreme power!" pursued Phaulcon. "In the rose-water of your hookahs you steep their minds in what colour you will. With the glance of