Tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
Lumina nocte.’
‘What’s that you are declaiming, Jacques?’
‘Some lines of the Grecian Sappho, turned into Latin by Catullus, that figure, with an exquisite precision, the commingling in a lover of passion and of bashfulness.’
The look of cold aloofness suddenly vanished from Madeleine’s face.
‘The Grecian Sappho!’ she cried eagerly. ‘She is but a name to me. Tell me of her.’
‘She was a poetess. She penned amorous odes to diverse damsels, and then leapt into the sea,’ he answered laconically, looking at her with rather a hostile light in his bright eyes.
‘Repeat me one of her odes,’ she commanded, and Jacques began in a level voice:—
‘Deathless Dame Venus of the damasked throne, daughter of Jove, weaver of wiles, I beseech thee tame not my soul with frets and weariness, but if ever in time past thou heard’st and hearkened to my cry, come hither to me now. For having yoked thy chariot of gold thou did’st leave thy father’s house and fair, swift swans, with ceaseless whirring of wings over the sable earth did carry thee from heaven through the midmost ether. Swift was their coming, and thou, oh, blessed one, a smile upon thy deathless face, did’st ask the nature of my present pain, and to what new end I had invoked thee, and what, once more, my frenzied soul was fain should come to pass.