And lifting himself slightly from his cushions he kissed his hand playfully to the girl, who, as though suddenly overcome by a sort of vague regret, still lingered, gazing at him, while a faint color crept through her cheeks like the deepening hue on the leaves of an opening rose.  Sah-luma saw her hesitation, and his face grew yet more radiant with malicious mirth.

“Hence.. hence, Irenya!” he exclaimed—­“Escape temptation quickly while thou mayest!  Support thy virgin pride in peace! ... thou shalt never say again Sah-luma’s kisses are unwelcome!  The Poet’s touch shall never wrong or sanctify thy name!—­thou art safe from me as pillared icicles in everlasting snow!  Dear little one, be happy without love if that be possible! ... nevertheless take heed thou do not weakly clamor in the after-years for once rejected joy!—­Now bid yon waiting Priest attend me,—­tell him I can but spare a few brief moments audience.”

Irenya’s head drooped,—­Theos saw tears in her eyes,—­but she managed to restrain them, and with something of a defiant air she made her formal obeisance and withdrew.  She did not return again, but a page appeared instead, ushering in with ceremonious civility a tall personage, clad in flowing white robes and muffled up to the eyes in a mantle of silver tissue,—­a majestic, mysterious, solemn-looking individual, who, pausing on the threshold of the apartment, described a circle in the air with a small staff he carried, and said in monotonous accents: 

“By the going-in and passing-out of the Sun through the Gates of the East and the Gates of the West,—­by the Vulture of Gold and White Lotus and the countless virtues of Nagaya, may peace dwell in this house forever!”

“Agreed to with all my heart!” responded Sah-luma, carelessly looking up from his couch but making no attempt to rise, . .  “Peace is an excellent thing, most holy father!”

“Excellent!” returned the Priest slowly advancing and undoing his mantle so that his face became fully visible,—­“So truly excellent indeed, that at times it is needful to make war in order to insure it.”

He sat down, as he spoke, in a chair which was placed for him at Sah-luma’s bidding by the page who had ushered him in, and he maintained a grave silence till that youthful servitor had departed.  Theos meanwhile studied his countenance with some curiosity,—­it was so strangely impassive, yet at the same time so full of distinctly marked intellectual power.  The features were handsome but also singularly repulsive,—­they were rendered in a certain degree dignified by a full, dark beard which, however, failed entirely to conceal the receding chin, and compressed, cruel mouth,—­the eyes were keen and crafty and very clear,—­the forehead was high and intelligent, and deeply furrowed with lines that seemed to be the result of much pondering over close and cunning calculation, rather than the marks of profound, unselfish, and ennobling thought.  The page having left the room, Sah-luma began the conversation: