Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/227



things which have, through luxurious habit, become necessities to their pallid existences, they hastily depart to the Land of the Sun, carrying with them their nameless languors, discontents, and incurable illnesses, for which Heaven itself, much less Egypt, could provide no remedy."

Be that as it may, the tourists assembled at the Gezireh Palace Hotel one winter were treated to a vision of loveliness which for a time made them momentarily forget their nameless languors in spells of admiration and envy, according to the sex which claimed them, the vision in question taking an apparently human shape in the person of the Princess Ziska.

Reputedly a Russian lady, Ziska was in reality the flesh-clad ghost of Ziska-Charmazel, the favorite of the harem of a great Egyptian warrior, described in forgotten histories as "The Mighty Araxes." Visiting Egypt at the same time as the Princess was Armand Gervase, a French painter of great renown, and the interest of the story may be imagined when it is explained that Armand was the nineteenth-*century incarnation of Araxes, who, it must be understood, had, in the dim long-ago, slain Ziska-Charmazel because she stood in the way of his ambition.

The modern Araxes is quickly enslaved by Ziska's loveliness, but the passion that consumes him is a