I know not well how to
express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the
flesh-warmth over her round arms, and what was visible of her full
bust,--in a word, her womanliness incarnated,--compelled me sometimes
to close my eyes, as if it were not quite the privilege of modesty to
gaze at her. Illness and exhaustion, no doubt, had made me morbidly
sensitive.
I noticed--and wondered how Zenobia contrived it--that she had always a
new flower in her hair. And still it was a hot-house flower,--an
outlandish flower,--a flower of the tropics, such as appeared to have
sprung passionately out of a soil the very weeds of which would be
fervid and spicy. Unlike as was the flower of each successive day to
the preceding one, it yet so assimilated its richness to the rich
beauty of the woman, that I thought it the only flower fit to be worn;
so fit, indeed, that Nature had evidently created this floral gem, in a
happy exuberance, for the one purpose of worthily adorning Zenobia's
head. It might be that my feverish fantasies clustered themselves
about this peculiarity, and caused it to look more gorgeous and
wonderful than if beheld with temperate eyes. In the height of my
illness, as I well recollect, I went so far as to pronounce it
preternatural.
"Zenobia is an enchantress!" whispered I once to Hollingsworth. "She
is a sister of the Veiled Lady. That flower in her hair is a talisman.
If you were to snatch it away, she would vanish, or be transformed into
something else."
"What does he say?" asked Zenobia.
"Nothing that has an atom of sense in it," answered Hollingsworth. "He
is a little beside himself, I believe, and talks about your being a
witch, and of some magical property in the flower that you wear in your
hair."
"It is an idea worthy of a feverish poet," said she, laughing rather
compassionately, and taking out the flower. "I scorn to owe anything
to magic. Here, Mr. Hollingsworth, you may keep the spell while it has
any virtue in it; but I cannot promise you not to appear with a new one
to-morrow. It is the one relic of my more brilliant, my happier days!"
The most curious part of the matter was that, long after my slight
delirium had passed away,--as long, indeed, as I continued to know this
remarkable woman,--her daily flower affected my imagination, though
more slightly, yet in very much the same way. The reason must have
been that, whether intentionally on her part or not, this favorite
ornament was actually a subtile expression of Zenobia's character.