Lycabetta shook her head.
“Why should you pity me? You should rather envy me. I am the joy of life. I grasp and clasp all pleasures, heedless of the passing hour. I make the most of our little summer, our fleeting sunlight. To drink, to love, to laugh is the swallow flight of my soul. You shall be as wise as I am and as happy.”
“Have you no fear of God?” Perpetua asked, in sad curiosity. Brought face to face with sin, her soul felt its pity stronger than its horror.
Lycabetta laughed, and her laughter sounded to Perpetua like the music of birds in a magic wood.
“I fear nothing but old age. Chilling kisses, the death of desire, the sands that overwhelm the altar of youth, the dying lights and fading garlands of life’s waning feast—these things I fear, but these things are not yet for you or for me, and when they come there is always the hemlock.”
“You speak despair,” Perpetua insisted, eager with the eagerness of untainted youth. “I answer with God’s mercy that can cleanse and save you. You are the Strange Woman—but you are a woman, born of a woman, made to bear the burden of women. Woman to woman, let me go.”
“I love you too well to lose you,” Lycabetta retorted. “You dream too much. I shall take great joy in teaching you realities. You do not know the value of your violet freshness. You will make a sweet priestess of love.”
Perpetua thrust out her hands as if to ward off her enemy, while she cried:
“You are the Strange Woman! Were you a devil, do you think you could ever make me like you?”
Lycabetta nodded ominously.