Benilo shook his head and pushed away the proffered wine.
"Your advice comes too late!"
For a moment neither spoke. Benilo, busied with his own thoughts, sat listening to the boisterous clamour of the revellers, while the harper's gaze rested unseen upon him.
After a pause he broke the silence.
"How chanced it," he said, placing his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder, "that Benilo, who has broken all ten commandments and, withal, hearts untold, Benilo, who could have at his feet every woman in Rome, became woman's prey, her abject slave? That he is grovelling in the dust, where he might be lord and master? That he whines and whimpers, where he should command?"
Benilo turned fiercely upon his interlocutor.
"Who dares say that I whine and whimper and grovel at her feet? Fools all! On a mountain pass the trip is easier down than up! Know you what it means to love a woman with mad consuming passion, but to be cast aside for some blatant ass, to catch a few crumbs of favour tossed in one's face? Men like that rhyming zebra Bembo, who sings of love, which he has never felt."
"Still you have not answered my question," said the harper with quiet persistence. "Why are you the slave where you should be the master? Theodora is whimsical, heartless, cruel; still she is a woman."
"She is a devil, a heartless beautiful devil who grinds the hearts of men beneath her feet and laughs. Sometimes she taunts me till I could strangle her—ah! But I placed myself in the demon's power and having myself broken the compact which bound me to her, body and soul—from the lord I was, I have sunk to the slave I am,—you see, I speak free from the heart, what little she has left of it."
The harper nodded.