"Farnarina? One who, like you, gave the day's life of a rose, and who got eternal life for it,—as you think to do."
She started a little, and a tremulous pain passed over the dauntless brilliance of her face and stole its color for awhile.
"I?" she murmured. "Ah, what does it matter for me? If there be just a little place—anywhere—wherever my life can live with his on the canvas, so that men say once now and then, in all the centuries, to each other, 'See, it is true—he thought her worthy of that, though she was less than a grain of dust under the hollow of his foot,' it will be enough for me—more than enough."
The old man was silent; watching her, the mockery had faded from his eyes; they were surprised and contemplative.
She stood with her head drooped, with her face pale, an infinite yearning and resignation stole into the place of the exultant triumph which had blazed there like the light of the morning a moment earlier.
She had lost all remembrance of time and place; the words died softly, as in a sigh of love, upon her lips.
He waited awhile; then he spoke:
"But, if you were sure that, even thus much would be denied to you; if you were sure that, in casting your eagle loose on the wind, you would lose him forever in the heights of a heaven you would never enter yourself; if you were sure that he would never give you one thought, one wish, one memory, but leave every trace of your beauty to perish as fast as the damp could rot or the worm could gnaw it; if you were sure that his immortality would be your annihilation, say, would you still bid me turn a gold key in the lock of his cage, and release him?"
She roused herself slowly from her reverie, and gazed at him with a smile he could not fathom; it was so far away from him, so full of memory, so pitiful of his doubt.
She was thinking of the night when she had found a man dying, and had bought his life back for him, with her own, from the gods. For the pact was sacred to her, and the old wild faith to her was still a truth.