The noise and the laughter outside died away,—and a deep silence ensued. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, and noted his own reflective attitude,—his brooding visage; and studied himself critically as he would have studied a picture.
“You are no Antinous, my friend”—he said aloud, addressing his own reflection with some bitterness—“A mere suntanned Oriental with a pair of eyes in which the light is more of hell than heaven. What should you do with yourself, frowning at Fate? You are a superb egoist,—no more.”
As he spoke, the roses in the vase beside him swayed lightly to and fro, as though a faint wind had fanned them, and their perfume stole upon the air like the delicate breath of summer wafted from some distant garden.
There was no window open—and El-Râmi had not stirred, so that no movement on his part could have shaken the vase,—and yet the roses quivered on their stalks as if brushed by a bird’s wing. He watched them with a faint sense of curiosity—but with no desire to discover why they thus nodded their fair heads to an apparently causeless vibration. He was struggling with an emotion that threatened to overwhelm him,—he knew that he was not master of himself,—and instinctively he kept his face turned away from the tranced Lilith.
“I must not look upon her—I dare not;” he whispered to the silence—“Not yet—not yet.”
There was a low chair close by, and he dropped into it wearily, covering his eyes with one hand. He tried to control his thoughts—but they were rebellious, and ran riot in spite of him. The words of Zaroba rang in his ears—“For you were the days of Ashtaroth.” The days of Ashtaroth!—for what had they been renowned? For Jove and the feasts of love,—for mirth and song and dance—for crowns of flowers, for shouting of choruses and tinkling of cymbals, for exquisite luxury and voluptuous pleasures,—for men and women who were not ashamed of love and took delight in loving;—were there not better, warmer ways of life in those old times than now—now when cautious and timid souls make schemes for marriage as they scheme for wealth,—when they snigger at “love” as though it were some ludicrous defect in mortal composition, and when real passion of any kind is deemed downright improper, and not to be spoken of before cold and punctilious society?
“Ay, but the passion is there all the same;”—thought El-Râmi—“Under the ice burns the fire,—all the fiercer and the more dangerous for its repression.”
And he still kept his hand over his eyes, thinking.
“The Christ claims all”—had said Zaroba. Nay, what has Christ done that He should claim all? “He died for us!” cry the preachers. Well,—others can die also. “He was Divine!” proclaim the churches. We are all Divine, if we will but let the Divinity in us have way. And moved by these ideas, El-Râmi rose up and crossed to a niche in the purple-pavilioned walls of the room, before which hung a loose breadth of velvet fringed with gold,—this he drew aside, and disclosed a picture very finely painted, of Christ standing near the sea, surrounded by His disciples—underneath it were inscribed the words—“Whom say ye that I am?”
The dignity and beauty of the face and figure were truly marvellous, the expression of the eyes had something of pride as well as sweetness, and El-Râmi confronted it as he had confronted it many times before, with a restless inquisitiveness.