wielded the graceful, bending leaves.

"This is the way a poet should ever live!" murmured Theos,
glancing up from the soft cushions among which he reclined, to
Sah-luma, who lay with his eyes half-closed and a musing smile on
his beautiful mouth--"Self centered in a circle of beauty,--with
naught but fair suggestions and sweet thoughts to break the charm
of solitude. A kingdom of happy fancies should be his, with gates
shut last against unwelcome intruders,--gates that should never
open save to the conquering touch of woman's kiss! ... for the
master-key of love must unlock all doors, even the doors of a
minstrel's dreaming!"

"Thinkest thou so?" said Sah-luma lazily, turning his dark,
delicate head slightly round on his glistening, pale-rose satin
pillow--"Nay, of a truth there are times when I could bar out
women from my thoughts as mere disturbers of the translucent
element of poesy in which my spirit bathes. There is fatigue in
love, . . whose pretty human butterflies too oft weary the flower
whose honey they seek to drain. Nevertheless the passion of love
hath a certain tingling pleasure in it, . . I yield to it when it
touches me, even as I yield to all other pleasant things,--but
there are some who unwisely carry desire too far, and make of love
a misery instead of a pastime. Many will die for love,--fools are
they all! To die for fame, . . for glory, . . that I can understand, . .
but for love! ..." he laughed, and taking up a crushed rose-petal
he flipped it into the air with his finger and thumb--"I would as
soon die for sake of that perished leaf as for sake of a woman's
transient beauty!"