“Nay, lady, the fish brings the greatest happiness.”
“What is its meaning? It is a strange symbol. It must have some purport.”
The slave hesitated about answering.
Then, hearing steps on the pavement, and looking round, Domitia called—“Thou! Elymas! who pretendest to know all things, answer me this, I have an amulet—a fish—what doth it portend?”
“What?—the murex? That gives the imperial purple.”
“Bah! It is no murex, not a sea snail but a fish. What is the signification?”
“Lady, to one so high, ever-increasing happiness.”
“Away! you are all wrong. Happiness is not where you deem it. False thou art, false to thy creed. Thou speak of a divine ray in every man and woman! an emanation from the Father of Light, quivering, battling, straining to escape out of its earthly envelope and soar to its source!—thou speak of this, and in all thy doings and devisings seekest what is sordid and dark!”
The gloomy man folded his cloak about him, and looking at her from under his penthouse brows answered:—
“Thou launchest forth against me without reason. Knowest thou what is a comet? It is a star that circles about the sun and from it drinks in all the illumination it can absorb, like as the thirsty soil in summer sucks in the falling rain, or the fields the outflow of the Alban Lake; then it flies away into space, and as it flies it sheds its effulgence, becoming ever more dim till it reaches infinite darkness and is there black in the midst of absolute nigritude. Then it turns and comes back to replenish its urn.”