"And how am I to get it?" asked Demetrios.

"Ah! that will be a little more difficult. She is an Egyptian, you know, and she makes up her two hundred plaits only once a year, like the other women of her race. But I want my comb to-morrow, and you must kill her to get it. You have sworn an oath."

She pouted at Demetrios, who was looking on the ground. Then she concluded very quickly:

"I have chosen my necklace also. I want the seven-stringed pearl necklace on the neck of Aphrodite."

Demetrios started violently.

"Ah! this time, it is too much! You shall not have the laugh of me to the end! Nothing, do you understand? neither the mirror, nor the comb, nor the collar."

But she closed his mouth with her hand and resumed her caressing tone:

[Ill.u.s.tration: But she closed his mouth with her hand.]

"Don't say that. You know well that you will give me this too. I am sure of it. I shall have the three gifts. You will come to see me to-morrow evening, and the day after to-morrow if you like, and every evening. I shall be at home at any hour, in the costume you prefer, painted according to your taste, with my hair dressed after your pleasure, ready for your most extravagant caprices, If you desire but tender love, I will cherish you like a child. If you thirst after rare sensations, I will not refuse you the most agonising. If you wish for silence, I will hold my peace, when you want me to sing, ah! you will see, Well-Beloved!

I know songs of all countries. I know some that are soft as the murmur of springs, others that are terrible as the coming of thunder. I know some so simple and fresh that a young girl might sing them to her mother; and I know some that could not be sung at Lampsacos. I know some that Elephantis would have blushed to hear, and that I dare not sing above a whisper. The nights you want me to dance, I will dance till morning. I will dance fully dressed, with my trailing tunic, or in a transparent veil, or in open drawers and a corselet with two openings to allow the b.r.e.a.s.t.s to peep through. But have I promised you to dance naked? I will dance naked if you prefer. Naked and with flowers on my head, or naked with my hair loose, painted like a divine image. I can balance my hands, circle my arms, vibrate my breast, heave my belly, contort my croup, you will see! I dance on the tips of my toes or lying down in the carpets. I know all the dances of Aphrodite, that are danced before Ourania, and those that are danced before Astarte. I even know some they dare not dance. I will dance you all the loves. When this is finished we shall be only at the beginning. You will see! The queen is richer than I am, but there is not in all the palace a chamber as amorous as mine. I don't tell you what you will find there. There are things too beautiful for me to be able to give you an idea of them, and others so strange that I do not know the words to describe them. And then, do you know what you will see, something which transcends all the rest? You will see Chrysis whom you love, and whom you do not yet know.

Yes, you have only seen my face, you do not know how beautiful I am. Ah!

Ah! . . . Ah! Ah! You will have surprises. Ah! how you will play with my nipples, how you will bend my little waist as it lies upon your arm, how you will tremble in the grasp of my knees, how you will faint away on my moving body! And how excellent my mouth! Ah! my kisses!"

Demetrios looked at her with a frenzied eye.

She continued tenderly:

"What! You will not give me a poor old silver mirror when you may have all my hair like a golden forest in your hands?"

Demetrios tried to touch it . . . She recoiled and said:

"To-morrow!"

"You shall have it," he murmured.

"And you will not take for me a little ivory comb which pleases me, When you can have my two arms like two branches of ivory around your neck?"

He tried to stroke them. She drew them behind her back and repeated: "To-morrow!"

"I will bring it," he said very low. "Ah! I knew it!" cried the courtesan; "and you will also give me the seven-stringed necklace of pearls on the neck of Aphrodite, and for that I will sell you all my body, which is like a half-opened sh.e.l.l of mother-of-pearl, and more kisses in your mouth than there are pearls in the sea!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Demetrios held out his head, supplicatingly.

She shot him a brilliant glance and gave him her sensual lips . . .

When he opened his eyes she was already afar off. A little pale shadow danced before her floating veil.

He returned vaguely towards the town, with his forehead bent under the weight of an inexpressible shame.

VI

THE VIRGINS

The dim dawn rose on the sea. All things were tinted with lilac. The furnace blazing on the summit of the tower of Pharos died down with the moon. Fugitive yellow gleams appeared in the violet waves like sirens'

faces under the hair of purple sea-weed. Daylight came all at once.

The quay was deserted. The town was dead. It was the grey light before the first day blush that illumines the world's sleep and brings the feverish dreams of morning.

Nothing existed, except silence.

The long boats anch.o.r.ed in line near the quays, with their rows of parallel oars hanging in the water, looked like sleeping birds. The perspective of the architectural line of the streets was unbroken by vehicle, horse, or slave. Alexandria was but a solitude, the unreal phantom of some antique city abandoned for centuries.

But the sound of light footsteps fell tremulously upon the ground, and two young girls appeared, one dressed in yellow, the other in blue.

They both wore maidens' girdles, which circled round the hips and buckled low down upon the body below the navel. They were the musicians of the night, the singing-girl and one of the flute-girls.

The flute-girl was younger and prettier than her friend. Her eyes smiled faintly, pale as the blue of her robe, half hidden under her eyelids.

Her two slender flutes hung dangling from her flowered shoulder-knot along her back. A double iris-garland, fastened to the ankles by two silver anklets, undulated beneath the gauzy robe and encircled the rounded legs.

She said:

"Myrtocleia, do not be sad because you have lost our tablets. Would you ever have forgotten that you possess the love of Rhodis, and can you think, naughty girl, you would ever have read in solitude the line written by my hand? Am I one of those faithless friends who engrave their bed-sister's name upon their nail and unite themselves to another girl as soon as the nail has grown to the limit? Do you need a souvenir of me when you have my living body? I am barely of nubile age, and yet I was not half so old on the day I saw you for the first time. You remember it well. It was at the bath. Our mothers took us in their arms and held us towards one another. We played for a long time on the marble before putting on our clothes again. We have never left one another since that day, and, five years afterward, we loved each other."

Myrtocleia answered:

"There is another first day, Rhodis, and you know it. It is the day you linked our two names together in writing upon the tablets. That was the first day! It will never come back again. But never mind. Each day is new for me, and when you awake towards evening, it is as if I saw you for the first time, You are not a girl at all: you are a little Arcadian nymph that has left her forests because Phoibos has dried up her fountain. Your body is supple as an olive branch, your skin is soft as water in summer, the iris circles about your legs, and you wear the lotus-flower like Astarte the open fig. In what wood haunted by immortals did your mother betake her to sleep before your thrice-blessed birth? and what roaming aegipan, or what river-G.o.d united himself with her in the gra.s.s? When we have left this terrible African soil, you shall take me to your fountain, far beyond Psophis and Phenens, to vast shady forests where, upon the soft earth, one may see the double footprints of satyrs and light-treading nymphs. There you shall search out a smooth rock, and you shall engrave upon the stone the words you wrote upon the wax: the words that are our joy. Listen, listen, Rhodis! By the girdle of Aphrodite upon which all desires are embroidered, all desires are unknown to me; for you are more than my dream! By the horn of Amaltheia whence flow all the good things of the world, the world is a matter of indifference to me; for you are the only good I have found in it! When I look at you and when I see myself, I know not why you love me in return. Your hair is as fair as ears of corn; mine is black as a ram's fleece. Your skin is as white as shepherd's cheese; mine is brown as the sand upon the beach. Your tender breast is as flowered as the orange tree in autumn; mine is meagre and barren as the rock pine. If my face has gained in beauty, it is because I have loved you. O Rhodis! well you know that my singular virginity is like the lips of Pan eating a sprig of myrtle; yours is the colour of roses, and dainty as the mouth of a little child. I do not know why you love me; but if you ceased to love me for a day; if, like your sister Theano who plays the flute by your side, you ever stayed to sleep in the houses that employ us, then I should never even think of sleeping alone in our bed, and when you came in you would find me strangled with my girdle."

The very idea was so wild and cruel that Rhodis's long eyes filled with smiles and tears. She placed her foot upon a street-post:

"My flowers between my legs hamper me. Undo them, adored Myrto. I have finished dancing for to-night."

The singing-girl started.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Oh! it is true. I had already forgotten them, those men and women. They made both of you dance, you in this Cossian robe, transparent as water, and your sister naked with you. If I had not protected you, they would have possessed you like a prost.i.tute, as they did your sister before our eyes in the same room. Oh, what an abomination! Did you hear her cries and wailings? How dolorous is the love of man!"

She knelt down beside Rhodis and unclasped the two garlands, and then the three higher up, imprinting a kiss on the place of each. When she rose to her feet, the child took her by the neck and swooned under her mouth.

"Myrto, you are not jealous of all those debauchees? What does it matter that they should have seen me? Theano suffices them, and I have relinquished her to them. They shall not have me, darling Myrto. Do not be jealous of them."