But Theos stood still.  His eyes roved from Sah-luma to the glittering statue and from the statue back again to Sah-luma in mingled doubt and dread.  A vague foreboding filled his mind, he fancied that a bevy of mocking devils peered at him from out the wooded labyrinth, ... and that Sin was the name of the white siren yonder, whose delicate body seemed to palpitate with every slow ripple of the surrounding waters.  He hesitated,—­with that often saving hesitation a noble spirit may feel ere willfully yielding to what it instinctively knows to be wrong,—­and for the briefest possible space an imperceptible line was drawn between his own self-consciousness and the fascinating personality of his lately found friend—­a line that parted them asunder as though by a gulf of centuries.

“Sah-luma,” he said, in a tremulous, low tone, “tell me truly,—­is it good for us to be here?”

Sah-luma regarded him in wide-eyed amazement.

“Good? good?” he repeated with a sort of impatient disdain.  “What dost thou mean by ‘good’?  What is good?  What is evil?  Canst thou tell?  If so, thou art wiser than I!  Good to be here?  If it is good to drown remembrance of the world in draughts of pleasure; if it is good to love and be beloved; if it is good to enjoy, aye! enjoy with burning zest every pulsation of the blood and every beat of the heart, and to feel that life is a fiery delight, an exquisite dream of drained-off rapture, then it is good to be here!  If,” and he caught Theos’s hand in his own warm palm and pressed it, while his voice sank to a soft and infinitely caressing sweetness, “if it is good to climb the dizzy heights of joy and drowse in the deep sunshine of amorous eyes, . . to slip away on elfin wings into the limitless freedom of Love’s summerland, ... to rifle rich kisses from warm lips even as rosebuds are rifled from the parent rose, and to forget! ...—­to forget all bitter things that are best forgotten—­”

“Enough, enough!” cried Theos, fired with a reckless impulse of passionate ardor.  “On, on, Sah-luma!  I follow thee!  On! let us delay no more!”

At that moment a far-off strain of music saluted his ears—­music evidently played on stringed instruments.  It was accompanied by a ringing clash of cymbals; he listened, and listening, saw a smile lighten Sah-luma’s features—­a smile sweet, yet full of delicate mockery.  Their eyes met; a wanton impetuosity flashed like reflected flame from one face to the other, and then, without another instant’s pause, they hurried on.

Across a broad, rose-marbled terrace garlanded with a golden wealth of orange-trees and odorous oleanders.. ... under a trellis-work covered with magnolias whose half-shut, ivory-tinted buds glistened in the moonlight like large suspended pearls, . . then through a low-roofed stone-corridor, close and dim, lit only by a few flickering oil-lamps placed at far intervals, . . then on they went, till at last, ascending three red granite steps