Callistion said:
"Now, through my son, I reign in Nacumera. There is no person who dares disobey me. Therefore, come close to me that I may see the beauty which besotted this Demetrios, whom, I think now, I must have loved."
"Oh, gaze your fill," said Melicent, "and know that had you possessed a tithe of my beauty you might have held the heart of Demetrios." For it was in Melicent's mind to provoke the woman into killing her before worse befell.
But Callistion only studied the proud face for a long while, and knew there was no lovelier person between two seas. For time here had pillaged very sparingly; and if Dame Melicent had not any longer the first beauty of her girlhood, Callistion had nowhere seen a woman more handsome than this hated Frankish thief.
Callistion said:
"No, I was not ever so beautiful as you. Yet this Demetrios loved me when I, too, was lovely. You never saw the man in battle. I saw him, single-handed, fight with Abradas and three other knaves who stole me from my mother's home—oh, very long ago! He killed all four of them. He was like a horrible unconquerable god when he turned from that finished fight to me. He kissed me then—blood-smeared, just as he was…. I like to think of how he laughed and of how strong he was."
The woman turned and crouched by the dead boy, and seemed painstakingly to appraise her own reflection on the water's surface.
"It is gone now, the comeliness Demetrios was pleased to like. I would have waded Acheron—singing—rather than let his little finger ache. He knew as much. Only it seemed a trifle, because your eyes were bright and your fair skin was unwrinkled. In consequence the man is dead. Oh, Melicent, I wonder why I am so sad!"
Callistion's meditative eyes were dry, but those of Melicent were not. And Melicent came to the Dacian woman, and put one arm about her in that dim, sweet-scented place, saying, "I never meant to wrong you."
Callistion did not seem to heed. Then Callistion said: