The mouth, too, was more hard.

For the rest, she was a royal-looking and lovely woman in the flower of her age, and splendidly attired in robes broidered with gold, over which she wore long strings of rounded pearls.

Her rippling golden hair was dressed in the old Greek fashion, tied in a simple knot behind her head, and over it was thrown a light veil worked with golden stars.
"Well, Captain Olaf," she said, "have you finished weighing my poor looks against those of this northern girl in the scales of your judgment?
If so, which of us tips the beam ?" "Iduna was more beautiful than ever you can have been, Augusta," I replied quietly.
She stared at me till her eyes grew quite round, then puckered up her mouth as though to say something furious, and finally burst out laughing.
"By every saint in Byzantium," she said, "or, rather, by their relics, for of live ones there are none, you are the strangest man whom I have known.

Are you weary of life that you dare to say such a thing to me, the Empress Irene ?" "Am I weary of life?
Well, Augusta, on the whole I think I am.

It seems to me that death and after it may interest us more.