She had drawn near him, her face flushed with intense expectation, her longing eyes dilated, her scarlet lips quivering with eagerness. That he was a stranger and a noble was nothing to her: she knew he had wealth; she saw he had perception.
"See here!" she said, swiftly, the music of her voice rising and falling in breathless, eloquent intonation. "Those things are to the great works of his hand as a broken leaf beside your gardens yonder. He touches a thing and it is beauty. He takes a reed, a stone, a breadth of sand, a woman's face, and under his hand it grows glorious and gracious. He dreams things that are strange and sublime; he has talked with the gods, and he has seen the worlds beyond the sun. All the day he works for his bread, and in the gray night he wanders where none can follow him; and he brings back marvels and mysteries, and beautiful, terrible stories that are like the sound of the sea. Yet he is poor, and no man sees the things of his hand; and he is sick of his life, because the days go by and bring no message to him, and men will have nothing of him; and he has hunger of body and hunger of mind. For me, if I could do what he does, I would not care though no man ever looked on it. But to him it is bitter that it is only seen by the newt, and the beetle, and the night-hawk. It wears his soul away, because he is denied of men. 'If I had gold, if I had gold!' he says always, when he thinks that none can hear him."
Her voice trembled and was still for a second; she struggled with herself and kept it clear and strong.
The old man never interrupted her.
"He must not know: he would kill himself if he knew; he would sooner die than tell any man. But, look you, you drape your pictures here with gold and with purple, you place them high in the light; you make idols of them, and burn your incense before them. That is what he wants for his: they are the life of his life. If they could be honored, he would not care, though you should slay him to-morrow. Go to him, and make you idols of his: they are worthier gods than yours. And what his heart is sick for is to have them seen by men. Were I he, I would not care; but he cares, so that he perishes."
She shivered as she spoke; in her earnestness and eagerness, she laid her hand on the stranger's arm, and held it there; she prayed, with more passion than she would have cast into any prayer to save her own life.
"Where is he; and what do you call him?" the old man asked her quietly.
He understood the meaning that ran beneath the unconscious extravagance of her fanciful and impassioned language.
"He is called Arslàn; he lives in the granary-tower, by the river, between the town and Yprès. He comes from the north, far away—very, very far, where the seas are all ice and the sun shines at midnight. Will you make the things that he does to be known to the people? You have gold; and gold, he says, is the compeller of men."
"Arslàn?" he echoed.