A subtle vague pleasure stole on her, a sharp sweet sorrow moved her,—for he was beautiful, and he was dead.
"If they would give him back his life?" she thought: and she looked for the glad forest-god playing on his reed amidst the amber asphodels, he who had the smile and the glance of Phratos. But she could see Pan's face no more.
The wind rose, the moon was hidden, all was dark save the flicker of the flame of the lamp; the storm had broken, and the rain fell: she saw nothing now but the bowed head of Thanatos, holding the rose of silence to his lips.
On her ear there seemed to steal a voice from the darkness, saying:
"One life alone can ransom another. Live immortal with us; or for that dead man—perish."
She bowed her head where she knelt in the darkness; the force of an irresistible fate seemed upon her; that sacrifice which is at once the delirium and divinity of her sex had entered into her.
She was so lowly a thing; a creature so loveless and cursed; the gods, if they took her in pity, would soon scorn her as men had scorned; whilst he who lay dead—though so still and so white, and so mute and so powerless,—he looked a king among men, though the gods for his daring had killed him.
"Let him live!" she murmured. "It's for me,—I am nothing—nothing. Let me die as the Dust dies—what matter?"
The wind blew the flame of the lamp into darkness; the moon still shone through the storm on to the face of Thanatos.
He alone heard. He—the only friend who fails no living thing. He alone remained, and waited for her: he, whom alone of all the gods—for this man's sake—she chose.