“Chrysis, O Chryseia, supplicates thee. Accept the poor gifts she lays at thy feet. Hear, love, and solace her that lives after thine example and for the cult of thy name, and grant her her prayers.”
She held out her hands gilded with rings, and bent low with her legs close together.
The vague canticle began again. The murmur of the harps rose up towards the statue with the swirling fumes of crackling incense from the priest’s censer.
“To thee, O Hetaira! . . . Chrysis consecrates her necklace.”
She drew herself up slowly to her full height and offered a bronze mirror which hung from her girdle.
“To thee, Astarte of the Night, that joinest hand to hand and lip to lip, and whose symbol is like to the footprint of the deer upon the pale soil of Syria, Chrysis consecrates her mirror. It has seen the haggard darkness of the eyelids and the glitter of the eyes after love, the hair glued to the temples by the sweat of thy battles, O! warrior-queen of ruthless hand, thou that joinest body to body and mouth to mouth.”