CHAPTER II
Eos led him into a great feasting chamber, and Druga saw there a great host of men sitting, as to a feast, side by side.
Each one of them was of solid black stone. The fact struck Druga's mind with a terrible impact. With a face like thunder he said:
"So it was you who turned my Feronia to stone, to drag me here to you by your spells, and then when you tire of me to turn me likewise into stone?"
The woman recoiled from his murderous rage, crying out in a shocked voice, a voice of virtue unjustly accused:
"Surely you don't think that I had anything to do with this? These men are the curse an enemy has put upon me; and every creature that I ever loved she has turned into stone soon or late and left me here alone forever. There is no cruelty like the cruelty of Diana Triformis."
The rage passed slowly from Druga, and left him weak and glad that his hands had not found their way to that glorious throat, as they had seemed about to do. For here was a woman who had suffered the same loss as he.
"Eos, we must take thought together, for it seems we have a common enemy. My own Feronia, a woman such as was only created by the Gods once in all Time, was turned into similar black stone before my eyes not long ago. We have a common enemy, and we must find a remedy for this curse she puts upon us. Else I will go through life as you have gone, with everything pleasant removed from it."
The artful eyes of Eos softened, and that mystery living in their depths lightened, her arms became soft pillars of the temple of her beauty as she lowered herself into the big chair at the head of that gloomy feasting board of death. Druga picked up the big body of one of the stone figures, carried it lightly to the side of the hall, and set it there on a bench. Then he took the vacant place at the board beside the queen of the palace of the dead.