“Yes; that’s part of my Bashan inheritance, from Kunawat, the land of Job.”
“A woman and a devil beset him; (the two are in this face, methinks). Its hideousness, as its import, seems inappropriate in Love’s Bower.”
“Yes, ’tis hideous now, though once the face had beauty. It is not futile for young-love to remember that time gouges deformity into beautifulness, nor for all to remember how the Kings of the East in Moses’ time overthrew the Rephaim, the fallen giant followers of the goddess. The East is the home of light, and light is fateful to evil lives. Where are the Astarte-devotees now?”
As the man listened his eyes wandered to the place where the palm grove came up against the temple wing, and there he observed a purling ribband of water.
“Cornelius sees my poem of silver. It comes from a grove of cedars and sharon roses, out of a spring in the bosom of a hill. Look the other way. It passes under the alcove, under the temple wall; a short, dark passage brings it to liberty, ending in the Virgin’s Pool of Kidron. The sun allures it up to the clouds at last. But listen; it sings as it runs!”
“I hear many blending melodies.”
“Do you see that canopied dais? There the instructor, or preacher if you will, stands. The stream passes near it, getting impulse by a fall; true love is speeded when it runs by truth. That’s my lesson. Then there are Æolian harps this side and that of the dark alcove, the latter the type of the tomb.”
“But why?”
“True love has music both sides of the grave.”
“Mystic!”