II

DUST RETURNS TO EARTH

"Demetrios!" she cried.

And she rushed forward.

But after carefully dropping the wooden bolt, the young man remained motionless, and his glance betrayed such profound tranquility that Chrysis was suddenly stricken with a cold chill.

She had hoped for an impulse of generosity, a movement of the arms, the lips, anything, an outstretched hand . . .

Demetrios did not move.

He waited in silence for an instant, in an extremely correct att.i.tude, as if he wished clearly to disavow all responsibility in the case.

Then, seeing that nothing was asked of him, he strode towards the window and planted himself in the embrasure to contemplate the dawn of day.

Chrysis sat upon the low bed, with a fixed look in her dulled eyes.

Then Demetrios began to commune with himself.

"It is better thus," He said to himself. "Such trivial amus.e.m.e.nts on the very eve of death would, as a matter of fact, be most lugubrious. I wonder, however, that she should not have had a presentiment of it from the very beginning, and I marvel that she should have received me so enthusiastically. As for me, it is an adventure terminated. I regret somewhat this denouement, for all things considered, the only crime of which Chrysis is guilty is to have expressed very frankly an ambition which might have been shared by most women, without doubt, and if it were not necessary to cast a victim to the public indignation, I should be satisfied with the banishment of this too-ardent young woman, in order to get rid of her and at the same time leave her the joys of life.

But there has been a scandal, and none can stop the course of events.

Such are the effects of pa.s.sion. Thoughtless sensuality, or its contrary, the idea without the reality, do not involve these fatal consequences. We ought to have many mistresses, but to beware, with the help of the G.o.ds, of forgetting that all mouths resemble one another."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chrysis sat upon the low bed.]

Having thus, in an audacious aphorism, summed up one of his moral theories, he lightly resumed the normal course of his ideas.

He remembered vaguely an invitation to dine that he had accepted for the night before and then forgotten in the whirl of events, and he resolved to send an apology.

He considered whether he should put his slave-tailor up for sale, an old man who had remained attached to the fashionable cut of the former regime, and who succeeded very imperfectly with the new puckered tunics.

His mind was even so free from all preoccupation that he stumped out upon the wall a rough study of his group of _Zagreus and the t.i.tans_, a variant which modified the position of the princ.i.p.al character's right arm.

Hardly had he finished, when a gentle knock was heard at the door.

Demetrios opened without haste. The old executioner entered, followed by two helmeted hoplites.

"I bring the little cup," he said, smiling obsequiously at the royal lover.

Demetrios kept silence.

Chrysis, half beside herself, raised her head. "Come, my girl,"

continued the gaoler, "the hour has come. The hemlock is crushed. There is really nothing left but to take it. Do not be afraid. There is no pain."

Chrysis looked at Demetrios, who did not turn away his eyes.

Still continuing to regard him with her great black eyes that were rimmed with green light, Chrysis stretched out her hand, took the cup, and slowly raised it to her mouth.

She dipped her lips in it. The bitterness of the poison and also the pangs of the poisoning had been tempered with honey and narcotics.

She drank half the contents of the cup, then, whether it was that she had seen this gesture at the Theatre, in the _Thyestes_ of Agathon, or whether it was really the outcome of a spontaneous sentiment, she handed the poison to Demetrios. But the young man waved away this indiscreet suggestion.

Then the Galilaean drank the rest of the beverage even to the green slime at the bottom. An agonising smile overspread her cheeks, a smile in which there was certainly a little contempt.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"What must I do?" she said to the gaoler.

"Walk about the room, my girl, until you feel a heaviness in the legs.

Then lie down on your back, and the poison will do the rest."

Chrysis walked to the window, leaned her head against the wall, with her temples in her hand, and cast a last look of vanished youth upon the violet dawn.

The orient was bathed in a sea of colour. A long band, livid as a water leaf, enveloped the horizon with an olive-coloured girdle. Higher up, several tints sprang out of one another, liquid sheets of blue-green sky, irisated, or lilac-coloured, melting insensibly into the leaden azure of the upper heavens. Then, these tiers of colour rose slowly, a line of gold appeared, mounted, expanded: a thin thread of purple illumined this melancholic dawn, and, in a flood of blood, the sun was born.

It is written:

"The light is sweet . . ."

She remained thus, standing, so long as her legs could sustain her. When she showed signs of reeling, the hoplites carried her to the bed.

There, the old man disposed the white folds of the robe along the rigid limbs. Then he touched her feet and asked her:

"Do you feel anything?"