"Now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which I may not know. Whom wilt thou punish? Flaccus or Classicus?"
He hesitated. His vital hate of Saul of Tarsus, his fear for Lydia, his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged only a mind, and not a spirit. Yet it seemed unfair to withhold anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him.
"I lead a selfish life and an unhappy one. I am stricken in my loves; one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth I use to speed me in mine intents concerning the other two. If I avenge the death of one, I displease his spirit! If I visit punishment on his murderer, I make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on. If I withhold my hand, I give another, much beloved, unto death. And him I help, I help for mine own use. My life is at cross purposes; my right hand worketh against the left!"
"Thy love?" she repeated softly, with a question in her tone. But he did not answer it.
"A hopeless tangle," she said at last, "from which our ruling philosophers, degenerate imitators of Pyrrho, offer but one escape. Turn from it, cease to trouble over it, leave it, cast off all thought and memory of it—and begin anew!"
He shook his head, his eyes on the pavement, his hands clasped before him. But the primrose hand found his again.
"Thou canst not, by the choicest revenge, force Thanatos to yield up thy dead; thou confessest the evil thou workest in revenge as equal to the satisfaction; thou complainest that thy love is faithless—what else? So many thy pains, I can not remember them all; but in them all there is not the worth of one of thy sleepless nights. If thou canst not be a Spartan, be a Stoic; if not an avenger, then a forgetter; if not a lover, then a gallant! Above all things, harken unto a pagan truth: love's a lusty wight and can suffer forty mortal wounds and love again. None but an ostrich loves but once! Perchance I was right at first; thou shouldst have begun thine education in the first of Flora's celebration."
He winced, but presently raised his head.
"What didst thou when the procession carried me away that night?" he demanded, searching her face.
"When thou didst go away with the procession?" she laughed. "I went with them—of a necessity."