"Are you alone insensible to the charms of these?" And Benilo's interlocutor pointed to the whirling groups.
"I was thinking of one who is absent," Benilo replied, relapsing into his former listless attitude.
"Why not pluck the flowers that grow in your path, waiting but your will and pleasure?"
Benilo clenched his hands till the nails were buried in the flesh.
"Have you ever heard of an Eastern drug, which mirrors Paradise before your senses?"
Hezilo shook his head. "What of it?"
"He who becomes its victim is doomed irretrievably. While under its baleful spell, he is happy. Deprive him of it and the horrors of hell are upon him. No rest! No peace! And like the fiend addicted to the drug is the thrice accursed wretch who loves Theodora."
Hezilo regarded the Chamberlain strangely.
"Benilo deploring the inconstancy of woman," he said with noiseless laugh. Then, beckoning to one of the attendants, he took from the salver thus offered to him a goblet, which he filled with the dark crimson wine.
"Drink and forget," he cried. "You will find it even better than your Eastern drug."