of aging. Still, she looked much as he remembered her: heftily built, a narrow face which seemed to belong on a more slender woman, close-set dark eyes peering over a long nose.
The ensemble was odd. Taken feature by feature, Arsule was not really that attractive a woman. But, somehow, the whole worked together. Partly that was due to her vibrant personality. But most of it, Demansk thought, was because the personality infused the form shrouding it—which exemplified the word matron—with a kind of animal vitality. Arsule Knecht was one of those middle-aged women whom no one described as "good-looking"; but who, at the same time, most middle-aged men—certainly Demansk—found their eyes drawn toward.
"By the gods! It is you! I thought someone was playing a joke."
She stepped forward, hands outstretched. "Welcome, Verice! It's been so many years."
He took the hands and bowed over them. Then, kissed the knuckles in the approved style. Noticing, not for the first time, how slender and long the fingers were. As if they, like the face, belonged on a woman with much less in the way of a bosom and hips.
"Ha! Precious few times you ever did that. Haven't you become the proper fellow!"
Before he could say anything, Arsule had him by the elbow and was practically marching him toward the mansion. Talking without surcease all the way—in that, too, she hadn't changed.
"I've got quite a crowd here tonight, delighted to show you off—and why did you really come, Verice, don't tell me any lies!—but first you must see my new collection of sculptures, which really aren't sculptures exactly because they're carved from wood, they're icons made by Southrons, believe it or not—wonderful work and how do savages manage that, I wonder?—some new religious cult of theirs called the 'Young Word'—which, by the way, from what I can tell has some interesting twists to it, at least it's not the same old 'god of this, goddess of that' business—does everybody have to mimic