CHAPTER II
To my utter amazement she followed her last words by slipping off her jewels and robes. She had the grandeur of a goddess from throat to feet. She curved into a long, deep, easy chair, and said, “Why have you people of to-day not perfected the woman as you have perfected flowers?” She continued in a soft, dreamy voice, “Oh, days of the youth of the world, days of the first coming of pleasure!... During the nineteen hundred years of my sleep in the grave what new joy have you all discovered. What new pleasure have you found? Invite me to share it with you....”
“We need more time, Callisto,” I pleaded.
She smiled in derision. “Your art and thought have both borrowed from us—parasites of our dead bodies. Descartes and Kant borrowed from our Parmenides. Euclid, Archimedes, Aristotle, Democritus, Heraclitus ... you have discovered nothing that they had not dreamt. You have discovered nothing, not even America. Aristotle said the earth was round, and indicated the path that Columbus finally took. But, oh! if only you had discovered one new pleasure; only one.”
I sighed. I could not combat her arguments any more than I could resist her beauty. Instead, I simply said, “Will you take a cigarette? Doubtless Aristotle taught you that——”
“No,” Callisto answered; “but do you offer me that as a new pleasure?”
She consented to take one, and I taught her the best method of getting joy from those tubes of white and gold. There followed a long silence. She held in her hand my packet of cigarettes, and seemed to be deep in the enjoyment of an emotion she would not share. Another cigarette was lit for her, and slowly smoked. Callisto, at last, had found a new pleasure!
BYBLIS
Amaryllis told to the three young women and the three philosophers, as if they were little children, this fable.
“Travellers I have known, who have gone to Caril by ascending the Méandre far beyond the range of the shepherds, have seen the River God asleep in the shade on the river-bank. He had a long green beard, and his face was wrinkled like the river’s grey and rocky banks from which trailed dripping plants. His old eyelids seemed dead as they overhung the eyes which were for ever blind. It is likely that if any one went to find him now, he would not be discovered alive.
“Now this was the father of Byblis by his marriage with the nymph Cyanée; I will tell you the story of the unhappy Byblis.”