“Do not jest, Thais.  I bring thee the unknown love.”

“Friend, you come too late.  I know every kind of love.”

“The love that I bring thee abounds with glory, whilst the loves that thou knowest breed only shame.”

Thais looked at him with an angry eye, a frown gathered on her beautiful face.

“You are very bold, stranger, to offend your hostess.  Look at me, and say if I resemble a creature crushed down with shame.  No, I am not ashamed, and all others who live like me are not ashamed either, although they are not so beautiful or so rich as I am.  I have sown pleasure in my footsteps, and I am celebrated for that all over the world.  I am more powerful than the masters of the world.  I have seen them at my feet.  Look at me, look at these little feet; thousands of men would pay with their blood for the happiness of kissing them.  I am not very big, and I do not occupy much space on the earth.  To those who look at me from the top of the Serapeium, when I pass in the street, I look like a grain of rice; but that grain of rice has caused among men, griefs, despairs, hates, and crimes enough to have filled Tartarus.  Are you not mad to talk to me of shame when all around proclaims my glory?”

“That which is glory in the eyes of men, is infamy before God.  O woman, we have been nourished in countries so different, that it is not surprising we have neither the same language nor the same thoughts!  Yet Heaven is my witness that I wish to agree with thee, and that it is my intention not to leave thee until we share the same sentiments.  Who will inspire me with burning words that will melt thee like wax in my breath, O woman, that the fingers of my desires may mould thee as they wish?  What virtue will deliver thee to me, O dearest of souls, that the spirit which animates me, creating thee a second time, may imprint on thee a fresh beauty, and that thou mayest cry, weeping for joy, ’It is only now that I am born’?  Who will cause to gush in my heart a fount of Siloam, in which thou mayest bathe and recover thy first purity?  Who will change me into a Jordan, the waves of which sprinkled on thee, will give thee life eternal?”

Thais was no longer angry.

“This man,” she thought, “talks of life eternal and all that he says seems written on a talisman.  No doubt he is a mage, and knows secret charms against old age and death,” and she resolved to offer herself to him.  Therefore, pretending to be afraid of him, she retired a few steps to the end of the grotto, and sitting down on the edge of the bed, artfully pulled her tunic across her breast; then, motionless and mute and her eyes cast down, she waited.  Her long eyelashes made a soft shadow on her cheeks.  Her entire attitude expressed modesty; her naked feet swung gently, and she looked like a child sitting thinking on the bank of a brook.  But Paphnutius looked at her, and did not move.  His trembling knees hardly supported him, his tongue dried in his mouth, a terrible buzzing rang in his ears.  But all at once his sight failed, and he could see nothing before him but a thick cloud.  He thought that the hand of Jesus had been laid on his eyes, to hide this woman from them.  Reassured by such succour, strengthened and fortified, he said with a gravity worthy of an old hermit of the desert—­