"Oh, I loved many those years, for the loss of a great love sends us
vainly from hand to hand of many lesser loves, to ease a little the
great ache; and at that time the world seemed full of my lovers. I have
forgotten none of them. They pass before me, a fair frieze of
unforgotten faces; but most I loved a Roman poet, because, perhaps, he
loved so well the memory of her I had loved, and knew so skilfully to
make bloom again among his own red roses those petals of passionate
ivory which the fishermen of Lesbos had recovered from the sea."

"Tell me of your lovers, Silencieux," said Antony again.

"Hundreds of years after, I loved in Florence a young poet with a face
of silver. His soul was given to a little red-cheeked girl. She died,
and then I took him to my bosom, and loved him on through the years,
till his face had grown iron with many sorrows. Now at last, his
baby-girl by his side, he sits in heaven, with a face of gold. In
Paris," she went on, "have I been wonderfully beloved, and in northern
lands near the pole--"

"But--England?" said Antony. "Tell me of your English lovers."

"Best of them I love two: one a laughing giant who loved me three
hundred years ago, and the other a little London boy with large eyes of
velvet, who mid all the gloom of your great city saw and loved my face,
as none had seen and loved it since she of Mitylene. I found the giant
sitting by a country stream, holding a daffodil in his mighty hands and
whistling to the birds. He took and wore me like a flower. I was to him
as a nightingale that sang from his sleeve, for he loved so much
besides. Yet me he loved best, as those who can read his secret poems
understand. But my little London boy loved me only. For him the world