All the seats faced a great dais at the chamber's far end where three thrones were set.
But it was the men and women in the great chamber who filled St.
George with wonder.

The women--they were beautiful women, slow-moving, slow-eyed, of soft laughter and sudden melancholy, and clear, serene profiles and abundant hair.

And they were all _alive_, fully and mysteriously alive, alive to their finger-tips.

It was as if in comparison all other women acted and moved in a kind of half-consciousness.

It was as if, St.George thought vaguely, one were to step through the frame of a pre-Raphaelite tapestry and suddenly find its strange women rejoicing in fulfillment instead of yearning, in noon instead of dusk.