sympathy!  Might he not possibly guard him in some way and ward off impending danger?  But what danger?  What spectral shadow of dread hovered above this brilliant scene of high feasting and voluptuous revelry?  None that he could imagine or define, and yet he was conscious, of an omimous, unuttered premonition of peril in the very air—­peril for Sah-luma, always for Sah-luma, never for himself, ...  Self seemed dead and entombed forever!  Involuntarily lifting his eyes to the great green dome where the globe of fire twirled rapidly like a rolling star, he saw some words written round it in golden letters, they were large and distinct, and ran thus: 

“Live in the Now, but question not the Afterwards!”

A wise axiom! ... yet almost a platitude, for did not every one occupy themselves exclusively with the Now, regardless of future consequences?  Of course!  Who but sages—­or fools—­would stop to question the Afterwards!

Just then Lysia ascended her black crystal throne in all her statuesque majesty, and sinking indolently amid its sable cushions, where she shone in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl set in ebony, she signed to her guests to resume their places at table.  She was instantly obeyed.  Sah-luma took what was evidently his accustomed post at her right hand, while Theos found a vacant corner on her left, next to the picturesque, lounging figure of the young man Nir jahs, who looked up at him with a half smile as he seated himself, and courteously made more room for him among the tumbled emerald silk diapers of the luxurious divan, they now shared together.  Nir jahs was by no means sober, but he had recovered a little of his self-possession since Lysia’s sleepy eyes had darted such cold contempt upon him, and he seemed for the present to be on his guard against giving any further possible cause of offence.

“Thou art a new comer,—­a stranger, if I mistake not?” he inquired in a low, abrupt, yet kindly tone.

“Yes,” replied Theos in the same soft sotto-voce.  “I am a mere sojourner in Al-Kyris for a few days only, ... the guest of the divine Sah-luma.”

Nir-jahs raised his eyebrows with an expression of amused wonder.

“Divine!” he ejaculated “By my faith! what neophyte have we here!” and supporting himself on one elbow he stared at his companion as though he saw in him some singular human phenomenon.  “Dost thou really believe,” he went on jestingly, “in the divinity of poets?  Dost thou think they write what they mean, or practice what they preach?  Then art thou the veriest innocent that ever wore the muscular semblance of man!  Poets, my friend, are the most absolute impostors, . . they melodize their rhymed music on phases of emotion they have never experienced; as for instance our Lameate yonder will string a pretty sonnet on the despair of love, he knowing nothing of despair, . . he will write of a broken heart, his own being unpricked by so much as a pin’s point of trouble; and he will speak in his verso of dying for love when he would not let his little finger ache for the sake of a woman who worshipped him!  Look not so vaguely! ’tis so, indeed! and as for the divine part of him, wait but a little, and thou shalt see thy poet-god become a satyr!”