At the moment, indeed, she was not a pleasing spectacle, for in the heat
and excitement of her mad dance she had cast off her gold breast-plate
or stomacher, leaving herself naked except for her kirtle and the thin,
gold-spangled robe upon her shoulders over which streamed her black,
disordered hair. Contrasting strangely in the silver moonlight with her
glistening, copper-coloured body, the mask of Little Bonsa on her head
glared round with its fixed crystal eyes and fiendish smile as she
turned her long neck from side to side. Seen thus she scarcely looked
human, and Alan's heart was filled with pity for the poor bedizened
wretch she named her husband, who had just been forced to announce the
date of his own suicide.
Soon, however, he forgot it, for a new act in the drama had begun. Two
priests clad in horns and tails leapt on to the dais and at a signal
unlaced the mask of Little Bonsa. Now the Asika lifted it from her
streaming face and held it on high, then she lowered it to the level
of her breast, and holding it in both hands, walked to the edge of
the dais, whereon priests, disguised as fiends, began to leap at it,
striving to reach it with their fingers and snatch it from her grasp.
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