The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING No longer was she the middle aged woman, worn with strange lusts; but a young woman of bewitching beauty. At once recognizing the power of her sorcery, and knowing that if he even so much as contemplated her Gorgon head all the power of his magic would be petrified, and that he would become but a puppet in her hands, but a toy to be played with and when broken cast aside, he quietly rose as if nothing unusual had occurred; and replacing the bust on the mantel- piece turned towards her and commenced with her a magical conversation; that is to say a conversation which outwardly had but the appearance of the politest small talk but which inwardly lacerated her evil heart, and burnt into her black bowels as if each word had been a drop of some corrosive acid. She writhed back from him; and then again approached him even more beautiful than she had been before. She was battling for her life now, and no longer for the blood of another victim. If she lost, hell yawned before her, the hell that every once beautiful woman who is approaching middle age, sees before her the hell of lost beauty, of decrepitude, of wrinkles and fat. The odour of man seemed to fill her whole subtle form with a feline agility, with a beauty irresistible. One step nearer and then she sprang at Frater P. and with an obscene word sought to press her scarlet lips to his. As she did so Frater P. caught her and holding her at arm’s length smote the sorceress with her own current of evil, just as a would-be murderer is sometimes killed with the very weapon with which he has attacked his victim. A blue-greenish light seemed to play round the head of the vampire, and then the flaxen hair turned the colour of muddy 175