"I don't know. Somehow, when you pay court to me, you make it sound like—the other thing."
"But I am in love——"
"Wait," she said hastily. "I'll sing another funny song—the same sort of song you found so amusing—about Naxos and Tenedos. It is called 'Invocations.'"
As a little bird looks up to heaven after every sip of water, so Thusis looked up after inspiration had sufficiently saturated her. She lifted her pretty voice as clearly and sweetly as a linnet sings in the falling rain:
"Wine poured out to Aphrodite,
On thy sacred sands,
In libations to the mighty
Blue-eyed goddess Aphrodite
Perfumes all thy strands,
Scents the meadows and thy woodlands,
Tenedos, my Tenedos!
Every maiden understands
Why each flowering orchard close
Swims with fragrance of the rose.
Votive wine that long ago
Set thy sacred soil aglow
Sweetens still each Grecian nose
In Tenedos, my Tenedos!
II
God-like Bacchus with his flighty
Band of laughing jades,
Drank and sang and every night he
Got so classically tight he
Sought thy sylvan glades.
Snoring where he gaily reveled,
Tenedos, my Tenedos!
Mid his pretty nymphs disheveled
Sleeping off the over-dose,
Waking late to vinous woes!
Votive wine that long ago
Set thy sacred groves aglow,
Still exhilarates each nose
In Tenedos, my Tenedos!"
"Oh, the cunning little song!" I exclaimed enchanted. "But what is Tenedos, anyway? It's an island, isn't it?"
"It is," said Thusis solemnly.
"Certainly. I remember. And so is Naxos—Greek islands in the Ægean."
"I shall mark you perfect," said Thusis gravely. And she wrote "perfect" in the air with one slim forefinger.
"Why," said I curiously, "do you sing songs about Naxos and Tenedos?"