“I have never really suffered ...” repeated Sah-luma slowly:  . .  “But—­I have imagined suffering!  That is enough for me!  The passions, the tortures, the despairs of imagination are greater far than the seeming real, petty afflictions with which human beings daily perplex themselves; indeed, I have often wondered.. “here his eyes grew more earnest and reflective ...” whether this busy working of the brain called ‘Imagination’ may not perhaps be a special phase or supreme effort of memory, and that therefore we do not imagine so much as we remember.  For instance,—­if we have ever lived before, our present recollection may, in certain exalted states of the mind, serve to bring back the shadow-pictures of things long gone by, . . good or evil deeds, . . scenes of love and strife, . . ethereal and divine events, in which we have possibly enacted each our different parts as unwittingly as we enact them here!"..  He sighed and seemed somewhat troubled, but presently continued in a lighter tone..  “Yet, after all, it is not necessary for the poet to personally experience the emotions whereof he writes.  The divine Hyspiros depicts murderers, cowards, and slaves in his sublime Tragedies,—­but thinkest thou it was essential for him to become a murderer, coward, and slave himself in order to delineate these characters?  And I ...  I write of Love,—­love spiritual, love eternal,—­love fitted for the angels I have dreamt of—­but not for such animals as men,—­and what matters it that I know naught of such love, . . unless perchance I knew it years ago in some far-off fairer sphere! ...  For me the only charm of worth in woman is beauty! ...  Beauty! ... to its entrancing sway my senses all make swift surrender ...”

“Oh, too swift and too degrading a surrender!” interrupted Theos suddenly with reproachful vehemence ...  “Thy words do madden patience!—­Better a thousand times that thou shouldst perish, Sah-lama, now in the full plenitude of thy poet-glory, than thus confess thyself a prey to thine own passions,—­a credulous victim of Lysia’s treachery!”

For one second the Laureate stood amazed, . . the next, he sprang upon his guest and grasping him fiercely by the throat.

“Treachery?” he muttered with white lips..  “Treachery? ...  Darest thou speak of treachery and Lysia in the same breath? ...  O thou rash fool! dost thou blaspheme my lady’s name and yet not fear to die?”

And his lithe brown fingers tightened their clutch.  But Theos cared nothing for his own life,—­some inward excitation of feeling kept him resolute and perfectly controlled.

“Kill me, Sah-luma!” he gasped—­“Kill me, friend whom I love! ... death will be easy at thy hands!  Deprive me of my sad existence, . . ’tis better so, than that I should have slain thee last night at Lysia’s bidding!”

At this, Sah-luma suddenly released his hold and started backward with a sharp cry of anguish, . . his face was pale, and his beautiful eyes grew strained and piteous.