“Theos!” she said tremulously.  “Theos!” and waited.

He, mute and oppressed by indistinct, hovering recollections, fed his gaze on her seductive fairness for one earnest moment longer, —­then suddenly advancing he knelt before her, and took her unresisting hands in his.

“Lysia!”—­and his voice, even to his own ears, had a solemn as well as passionate thrill,—­“Lysia, what wouldst thou have with me?  Speak! ... for my heart aches with a burden of dark memories, —­memories conjured up by the wizard spell of thine eyes,—­those eyes so cruel-sweet that seem to lure me to my soul’s ruin!  Tell me—­have we not met before? ... loved before? ... wronged each other and God before? ... parted before? ...  Maybe ’tis but a brain sick fancy,—­nevertheless my spirit knows thee,—­feels thee,—­clings to thee,—­and yet recoils from thee as one whom I did love in by-gone days of old!  My thoughts of thee are strange, fair Lysia!”—­and he pressed her warm, delicate fingers with unconscious fierceness,—­“I would have sworn that in the Past thou didst betray me!”

Her low laugh stirred the silence into a faint, tuneful echo.

“Thou foolish dreamer!” she murmured half mockingly, half tenderly ...  “Thou art dazed with wine, steeped in song, bewitched with beauty, and knowest nothing of what thou sayest!  Methinks thou art a crazed poet, and more fervid than Sah-luma in the mystic nature of thine utterance,—­thou shouldst be Laureate, not he!  What if thou wert offered his place? ... his fame?”

He looked at her, surprised and perplexed, and paused an instant before replying.  Then he said slowly: 

“So strange a thing could never be ... for Sah-luma’s place, once empty, could not again be filled!  I grudge him not his glory-laurels,—­moreover, ... what is Fame compared to Love!” He uttered the last words in a low tone as though he spoke them to himself, ... she heard,—­and a flash of triumph brightened her beautiful face.

“Ah! ...” and she drooped her head lower and lower till her dark, fragrant tresses touched his brow ...  “Then, ... thou dost love me?”

He started.  A dull pang ached in his heart,—­a chill of vague uncertainty and dread.  Love! ... was it love indeed that he felt? ... love, ... or ... base desire?  Love ...  The word rang in his ears with the same sacred suggestiveness as that conveyed by the chime of bells,—­surely, Love was a holy thing, ... a passion pure, impersonal, divine, and deathless,—­and it seemed to him that somewhere it had been written or said ...  “Wheresoever a man seeketh himself, there he falleth from Love” And he, ... did he not seek himself, and the gratification of his own immediate pleasure?  Painfully he considered, ... it was a supreme moment with him,—­a moment when he felt himself to be positively held within the grasp of some great Archangel, who, turning grandly reproachful eyes upon him, demanded ...

“Art thou the Servant of Love or the Slave of Self?” And while he remained silent, the silken sweet voice of the fairest woman he had ever seen once more sent its musical cadence through his brain in that fateful question: