"Very much. I was, indeed, just about to go alone up to the city," replied Kabir, courteously. But while the youth began abruptly to ascend the path in front of him, Kabir was wondering, in rather a puzzled way, what could be the reason for the young Greek's sudden solicitude for his amusement, and for the want of interest in what should have been his first object of inquiry—the galley's rescue from the rocks.
The two of them passed in silence through the well-kept street that led to the agora from the west, and had almost reached the height of the acropolis before a further word was spoken between them. Kabir's curiosity was turning to amusement, and he was inclined to put the shepherd down as half-witted, when the boy turned on him and burst out, as if driven to the speech:
"Kabir, tell me, was that that you were saying last night—about the goddess of Babylon—true or not? Is there such a being, or is she but an invention of your mind? I conjure you, if you have pity, tell me the truth!"
As he spoke, Charmides, from being very pale, had flushed crimson, and his young eyes burned with unquenchable fire. A sudden, unique revelation was borne in upon the Phœnician, and he willingly passed over the blunt suggestion in the shepherd's question, in the pleasure of finding what was, to him, an entirely novel bent of mind. While they proceeded, then, on their way to the market-place, Kabir replied to the substance of Charmides' new queries.
"I told you the truth last evening, shepherd; as much truth, indeed, as I knew. I myself have never been in Babylon, and therefore have not, with mine own eyes, seen the goddess. But others, my friends, on returning to Tyre from the great city, have been able to talk of nothing but Istar, this living divinity. Yet it is many months since I was at home. By now she may have returned to the skies, from which, they say, she came. But that there was once such a being on earth I know; else I and all men of the East are gone suddenly demented."
"But her face—how do you imagine it? Her form—is it like a woman's? Tell me, Kabir! Tell me more of her!"
"How can I, never having looked upon her? How shall I imagine what no man, seeing, knows?"
"Surely you know of the music that surrounds her. Whence does it appear to come? Is it the sound of lyre or flute; or perhaps of many instruments together? Perhaps some hint of its melody is—"
"Shepherd, shepherd! Have I not told you that I know nothing of it? Said I not last night that that music drove mad those that listened? Lyres! Flutes! How could I know? How should I guess?"
"It is unbearable, this yearning. I am kept from sleep. I cannot eat. I am haunted by a face that I cannot see, lines that will not rise out of the chaos in which they lie. And no man will tell me what he knows. No man—no man."