CHAPTER VI
THE ROSE OF CHRYSIS THE LOVELY
It was a white, blue, yellow, red and green procession.
Thirty courtesans advanced carrying baskets of flowers, snow-white doves with red feet, veils of the most fragile azure and valuable ornaments.
An old white-bearded priest, enveloped from head to foot in stiff unbleached stuff walked in front of this procession of youth and guided towards the stone altar the line of devout worshippers.
They sang, and their song rose and fell like the sound of the sea and the winds. The first two carried harps, which they held in the palm of their left hands and bent forward like sickles of slender wood.
One of them advanced and said—
“Tryperha, beloved Cypris, offers thee this blue veil which she has spun herself so that thou mayst continue thy goodness to her.”