“See how much I love you!” he cried. “It was very heavy, but I brought it, green tub and all. Do you know why? Of course not, my poor simpletons. It is because these flowers grow wild in abundance in my native land. They are like the roses of Sharon blossoming in our mountain wildernesses, and the color is like the dawn flush, like the maiden glow in the cheeks of our girls.” He regarded the plant reflectively. “It is very strange how precious a symbol of memory becomes. My heart leapt when I saw it in the window, all abloom. How do you like it?”
“I always want to kneel before flowers,” Carlota said softly, as she touched the petals with her finger-tips lingeringly. “In Italy you find flowers before the wayside shrines, and I liked them better than churches. We had a shrine in a grotto at the end of the garden—” She stopped, but neither had noticed her words. Dmitri was in a fine abstract mood.
“Shrines are the proper places of worship,” he stated positively. “Groves first, no mountain-tops. All philosophers prefer the isolation of the mountain-top; witness whoever thought first of Parnassus, also Zarathustra and his taste for peaks. Every heart is in reality a secret shrine where the spirit may worship beauty, truth, ideals, love, without distraction. Why are you crowned to-day?” He broke off abruptly to smile with a brooding tenderness over Carlota.
Ames answered for her, telling of the approaching fête and of the production of his opera.
“And at last she has consented to sing Fiametta for me, isn’t that great?” He spoke with a certain carelessness that always aroused Dmitri.
“For you? And who are you?” he demanded. “You are the eternal Harlequin, the dancing, masked juvenile of all history and fiction, the necessary evil in all romance. You always win, no matter what cards Fate deals you. You play with a stacked deck, I tell you to your face, and your dice are loaded too. You are a trickster, and none may win the hand of Columbine from you. We, who are a million times more worthy of her love, we, the thinkers, the stable, faithful adorers, are not even seen by her when you flirt your rapier, and twirl before her eyes. I hate you.” He turned to Carlota calmly. “Are you going to sing at this fête?”
She smiled in confusion at his earnestness.
“I feel I must because its theme is all about my princess of Castle Tittani. I am responsible for it and its success.”
“What name do you think would be good for her to take, Dmitri? You know I do not even know her own to this day. It is her whim to hide it from me. I think if it were really a beautiful one, she would tell, don’t you?”
“Ignore him,” Dmitri told her gravely. “Names are nothing. I thank God I was a foundling. No, you did not know that, eh? There is a certain road that leads to a monastery. If I told you where it is and its name, you would not know anything about it, but it is very old, back to the Crusades, a place of sanctuary for kings and road knights alike. There is a shrine to Saint Demetra below it. I was left before it, and a brother found me and took me to the gray stone refuge. That is quite all as a basis of fact, but I weave about it the usual fantasy of desire. First, Demetra is only our pagan goddess disguised. She is Demeter of the harvest, the mother of food for the world, the bountiful, the ever-pitiful. And I was named Dmitri. Again, always your foundling grows up, imagining he is the lost son of the king, always of noble blood. But not I, Dmitri.” He perched himself on the window-seat, one arm around the azalea tub, smoking peacefully. “I like to think there were many of us, and before I came, my mother hoped to save me, the unwanted one, from the crowded life. I like to think she found courage, with my coming, to put me forth to high adventure and give me what you call ‘the big chance.’ So I feel brotherhood with all the world; and when I was fourteen, they put me out of the monastery with a fair education and a fine digestion. They feed you very well there. The only thing is, I was undoubtedly ruined for the seats of the mighty. A good digestion makes a man an optimist, and I was taught to choose my food wisely, without satiety. I paraphrase the prophet. Behold, as a man eateth, so is he.”