“Peradventure thou dost count me for a shade who hath momentarily put on the form!” she said archly. “But no! I am very real flesh and blood!”
Then she lightly touched her hand to one of his own convincingly.
“I am well persuaded that thou hast never crossed the Styx; but I came hither especially to see another, who dwelleth beyond.”
“The signs to-night forbid!” she replied with an intelligence that seemed to be official. “Four nights of each week the mystical curtain which veils the Unseen is parted, but this is not one of them.”
“I will come again,” Marcius replied in a low voice, beginning to turn away.
“Hasten not! Perchance thy discomfiture and loneliness may be soothed. Doth not the dominion of Eros cover the earth as well as the realm of spirit? Nay, doth not the universe bow to his mastery? Even the stars of heaven woo each other by their attractiveness, and flash forth their kisses in beams of light, and the cohesion of atoms is but the warm embrace of an universal enchantment!”
“I cannot listen to thee!”
“But thou art listening! Surely thou dost not despise the worship of the Temple and her gods, else thou art not a loyal Tarsian! None are dead to love, and both great and small do her honor!”
“I close my ears to thy beguilement!”
“I would not beguile thee, but thou art heartless, [pg 428]and withal cold in thy devotion to our sacred divinities!”