“What do you ask of the goddess for these precious offerings?”
She shook her head, smiled, and said:
“I ask nothing.”
Then she passed along the procession, stole a rose from a basket, and put it in her mouth as she went out.
One by one all the women followed. The door closed upon the empty temple.
Demetrios remained alone, concealed in the bronze pedestal.
He had not lost a gesture or a word of all this scene, and when everything was over, he remained motionless for a long time, harassed by new torments, passionate, irresolute.
He had thought himself quite cured of his madness of the night before, and had believed that henceforth nothing could throw him a second time into the ardent shadow of this strange woman.
But he had counted without her.