“Listen once more,” she went on. “I know whom you possess. I do not desire to be your mistress, nor do I aspire to become my Queen’s rival. No, Demetrios, do with me what you will: look upon me as a little slave whom one takes and casts aside in a moment. Take me like one of the lowest of those poor courtesans who wait by the side of the pathway for furtive and abortive love. In fact what am I but one of them? Have the Gods given me anything more than they have bestowed upon the least of all my slaves? You at least have the beauty which comes from the Gods.”
Demetrios gazed at her still more gravely.
“What do you think, unhappy woman,” he asked, “also comes from the Gods?”
“Love.”
“Or death.”
She got up.
“What do you mean? Death.... Yes, death. But that is so far away from me. In sixty years’ time I shall think of it. Why do you speak to me of death, Demetrios?”
“Death to-night.”
She burst into a frightened laugh.