"Thanks, no. But I will smoke." From his coat pocket Paul took out a briar pipe and the well-worn pouch. "In a month, Thessaly, The Key will be in the printer's hands. I found myself thinking of Pandora this morning. There are few really virtuous women and truth is a draught almost as heady I should imagine as Fra Diavolo."
"My dear Mario, you must admit that virtue is the least picturesque of the vices. When aggressive it becomes a positive disfigurement. The 'on guard' position, though useful in bayonet-fighting, leaves the æsthete cold. You would not have us treat our women as the Moslems do?"
"Women can rarely distinguish the boundary between freedom and license. Honestly I should like to revise the position of woman in Europe and America before I entrusted The Key to her keeping. Unmarried, she has quite enough freedom, married she has too much."
"Therefore she conceals her age and dyes her hair."
"Showing that she is not invulnerable to flattery."
"No woman is, and flattery may be likened to the artillery preparation which precedes a serious advance. But, my dear Mario, to deprive a woman of admiration is to deprive a fish of water. In London when a woman ceases to interest other men she ceases to interest her husband, unless he is not as other men. In Stambûl on the contrary the odalisque who bathes in rival glances finally bathes in the Bosphorus with her charming head in a sack. Fortunately we are at war with Turkey."
"Have you considered, Thessaly, what appalling sins must have been committed by the present generation of women in some past phase of existence?"
"There are instances in which the sins belong to the present phase. But I agree with you that the women are suffering more than the men. Therefore their past errors must have been greater. They are being taught the value of love, Mario. In their next incarnation they will remember. They will be reborn beneath a new star—your star. Something perturbs you. You are harassed by doubts and hunted by misgivings. I have secured permission to toil up hundreds of stairs in order that I may emulate the priests of Bel and look out upon the roofs of Babylon. This spectacle will cheer you. Join me, my friend, and I will show you the heart of the world."
IX
"Look," said Jules Thessaly, "below you stretches the Capital of the greatest empire man has ever known."