He smiled.
"Ay, truly, the gods forget. But if you would give yourself to death for him, why not do a lesser thing?—give your beauty, Folle-Farine?"
A scarlet flush burned her from head to foot. For once she mistook his meaning. She thought, how could a beauty that he—who perished there—had scorned, have rarity or grace in those cold eyes, of force or light enough to lure him from his grave?
The low melody of the voice in her ear flowed on.
"See you—what he lacks is only the sinew that gold gives. What he has done is great. The world rightly seeing must fear it; and fear is the highest homage the world ever gives. But he is penniless; and he has many foes; and jealousy can with so much ease thrust aside the greatness which it fears into obscurity, when that greatness is marred by the failures and the feebleness of poverty. Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong; gold is the war scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes and gives free passage to the sun-coursers, with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battle-fields of earth."
"You were to give that gold," she muttered, in her throat.
"Nay, not so. I was to set him free: to find his fame or his grave; as he might. He will soon find one, no doubt. Nay; you would make no bond with me, Folle-Farine. You scorned my golden pear. Otherwise—how great they are! That cruel scorn, that burning color, that icelike coldness! If the world could be brought to see them once aright, the world would know that no powers greater than these have been among it for many ages. But who shall force the world to look?—who? It is so deaf, so slow of foot, so blind, unless the film before its eyes be opened by gold."
He paused and waited.
She watched silent on the threshold there.
The cruel skill of his words cast on her all the weight of this ruin which they watched.