Her low laugh stirred the silence into a faint, tuneful echo.
"Thou foolish dreamer!" she murmured half mockingly, half tenderly … "Thou art dazed with wine, steeped in song, bewitched with beauty, and knowest nothing of what thou sayest! Methinks thou art a crazed poet, and more fervid than Sah-luma in the mystic nature of thine utterance,—thou shouldst be Laureate, not he! What if thou wert offered his place? … his fame?"
He looked at her, surprised and perplexed, and paused an instant before replying. Then he said slowly:
"So strange a thing could never be … for Sah-luma's place, once empty, could not again be filled! I grudge him not his glory-laurels,—moreover, … what is Fame compared to Love!" He uttered the last words in a low tone as though he spoke them to himself, … she heard,—and a flash of triumph brightened her beautiful face.
"Ah! …" and she drooped her head lower and lower till her dark, fragrant tresses touched his brow … "Then, … thou dost love me?"
He started. A dull pang ached in his heart,—a chill of vague uncertainty and dread. Love! … was it love indeed that he felt? … love, … or … base desire? Love … The word rang in his ears with the same sacred suggestiveness as that conveyed by the chime of bells,—surely, Love was a holy thing, … a passion pure, impersonal, divine, and deathless,—and it seemed to him that somewhere it had been written or said … "Wheresoever a man seeketh himself, there he falleth from Love" And he, … did he not seek himself, and the gratification of his own immediate pleasure? Painfully he considered, … it was a supreme moment with him,—a moment when he felt himself to be positively held within the grasp of some great Archangel, who, turning grandly reproachful eyes upon him, demanded …
"Art thou the Servant of Love or the Slave of Self?" And while he remained silent, the silken sweet voice of the fairest woman he had ever seen once more sent its musical cadence through his brain in that fateful question:
"Thou dost love me?"
A deep sigh broke from him, … he moved nearer to her, … he entwined her warm waist with his arms, and stared upon her as though he drank her beauty in with his eyes. Up to the crowning masses of her dusky hair where the little serpents' heads darted forth glisteningly,—over the dainty curve of her white shoulders and bosom where the symbolic Eye seemed to regard him with a sleepy weirdness,—down to the blue-veined, small feet in the silvery sandals, and up again to the red witchery of her mouth and black splendor of those twin fire-jewels that flashed beneath her heavy lashes—his gaze wandered hungrily, searchingly, passionately,—his heart beat with a loud, impatient eagerness like a wild thing struggling in its cage, but though his lips moved, he said no word,—she too was silent. So passed or seemed to pass some minutes,—minutes that were almost terrible in the weight of mysterious meaning they held unuttered. Then, with a half-smothered cry, he suddenly released her and sprang erect.
"Love!" he cried, … "Nay!—'tis a word for children and angels!—not for me! What have I to do with love? … what hast thou? … thou, Lysia, who dost make the lives of men thy sport and their torments thy mockery! There is no name for this fever that consumes me when I look upon thee, … no name for this unquiet ravishment that draws me to thee in mingled bliss and agony! If I must perish of mine own bitter-sweet frenzy, let me be slain now and most utterly, … but Love has no abiding-place 'twixt me and thee, Lysia! … Love! … ah, no, no! … speak no more of love … it hath a charmed sound, recalling to my soul some glory I have lost!"