The particular gift of Countess Addhema was to be reborn beautiful and young every time she could apply to the hideous bareness of her skull a living head of hair, a scalp, torn from the head of a living victim. This was why her tomb was full of the skulls of young women. Rene recoiled in horror at the sight of his mistress restored to her real condition: the cadaver of an old woman, fleshless, cold, totally bald, and already turning to dust.