Beyond it was a white stair, up which she conducted me to a beautiful chamber.
"How you must miss the hot flowing river!" she said.

"But there is a bath in the corner with no white leeches in it! At the foot of your couch you will find a garment.

When you come down, I shall be in the room to your left at the foot of the stair." I stood as she left me, accusing my presumption: how was I to treat this lovely woman as a thing of evil, who behaved to me like a sister ?--Whence the marvellous change in her?
She left me with a blow; she received me almost with an embrace! She had reviled me; she said she knew I would follow and find her! Did she know my doubts concerning her--how much I should want explained?
COULD she explain all?
Could I believe her if she did?
As to her hospitality, I had surely earned and might accept that--at least until I came to a definite judgment concerning her! Could such beauty as I saw, and such wickedness as I suspected, exist in the same person?
If they could, HOW was it possible?
Unable to answer the former question, I must let the latter wait! Clear as crystal, the water in the great white bath sent a sparkling flash from the corner where it lay sunk in the marble floor, and seemed to invite me to its embrace.

Except the hot stream, two draughts in the cottage of the veiled woman, and the pools in the track of the wounded leopardess, I had not seen water since leaving home: it looked a thing celestial.

I plunged in.
Immediately my brain was filled with an odour strange and delicate, which yet I did not altogether like.