She was silent for a moment, her fingers resting lightly on that bowed head. When she spoke again her voice was gentle. “Last night, after you had gone, I remembered what you had said about Antony and his Egypt, and I found the play. Parts of it still go singing through my head. They loved each other so, those two magnificent fools. He finds her treacherous a hundred times, and each time forgives her, and loves her again—and she repays him beyond belief—far, far beyond power and treachery and death. Do you remember his cry in that first hour of his disaster?
“‘O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?’
“And when she weeps for pardon, how he tells her
“‘Fall not a tear, I say: one of them rates
All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss,
Even this repays me.’
“Though she has ruined him utterly—though he sees it and cries aloud
“‘O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,—
Whose eye becked forth my wars, and called them home,
Like a right gipsy hath at false and loose
Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.’
“Still, still his last thought is to reach her arms.
‘I am dying, Egypt, dying, only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.’”
“Why, he was well repaid,” said that strange, humble voice.
“I am glad that you feel that,” Delilah told him, and she rose swiftly. “Would you like to kiss me? You see, I have ruined you.”