He laughed maliciously, and Theos felt an angry flush rising to his brows.  He could not bear to hear Sah-luma thus lightly maligned even by this half-drunken reveller, it stung him to the quick, as if he personally were included in the implied accusation of unworthiness.  Nir-jalis perceived his annoyance, and added good naturedly: 

“Tush, man!  Vex not thy soul as to thy friend’s virtues or vices—­ what are they to thee?  And of truth Sah-luma is no worse than the rest of us.  All I maintain is that he is certainly no better.  I have known many poets in my day, and they are all more or less alike—­petulant as babes, peevish as women, selfish as misers, and conceited as peacocks.  They should be different?  Oh, yes!—­they should be the perpetual youth of mankind, the faithful singers of love idealized and made perfect.  But then none of us are what we ought to be!  Besides, if we were all virtuous, . . by the gods! the world would become too dull a hole to live in!  Enough!  Wilt drink with me?” and beckoning a slave, he had his own goblet and that of Theos filled to the brim with wine.

“To our more intimate acquaintance!” he said smilingly, and Theos, somewhat captivated by the easy courtesy of his manner, could do no less than respond cordially to the proffered toast.  At that moment a triumphant burst of music, like the sound of mingled flutes, hautboys, and harps, pushed through the dome like a strong wind sweeping in from the sea, and with it the hum and buzz of conversation began in good earnest.  Theos, lifting his gaze toward Lysia’s seat, saw that she was now surrounded by the four attendant negresses, who, standing two on each side of her throne, held large fans of peacock plumes, which, as they were waved slowly to and fro, emitted a thousand scintillations of jewel-like splendor.  A slave, attired in scarlet, knelt on one knee before her, proffering a golden salver loaded with the choicest fruits and wines; a lazy smile played on her lips—­lips that outrivaled the dewy tint of half-opening roses; the serpents in her hair and on her rounded arms quivered in the light like living things; the great Symbolic Eye glanced wickedly out from the white beauty of her heaving breast; and as he surveyed her, thus resplendent in all the startling seductiveness of her dangerous charms, her loveliness entranced and intoxicated him like the faint perfume of some rare and powerful exotic, ... his senses seemed to sink drowningly in the whelming influence of her soft and dazzling grace; and though he still resented, he could not resist her mesmeric power.  No wonder, he thought, that Sah-luma’s eyes darkened with passions as they dwelt on her! ... and no wonder that he, like Sah-luma, was content to be gently but surely drawn within the glittering web of her magic spell—­a spell fatal, yet too bewilderingly sweet for human strength to fight against.  The mysterious sense he had of danger lurking somewhere for Sah-luma applied, so he fancied,