hymn of Sah-luma!"

The handsome Laureate looked amused.

"Let her do so then!" he laughed carelessly. "Were she to leave me
I should not miss her greatly; a thousand pieces of gold will
purchase me another voice as sweet as hers,--another maid as fair!
Meanwhile the child is free to shape her own fate,--her own
future. I bind her no longer to my service; nevertheless, like the
jessamine-flower, she clings,--and will not easily unwind the
tendrils of her heart from mine."

"Poor jessamine-flower!" murmured Lysia negligently, with a touch
of malice in her tone. "What a rock it doth embrace; how little
vantage-ground it hath wherein to blossom!" And her drowsy eyes
shot forth a fiery glance from under their heavily fringed
drooping white lids.

Sah-luma met her look with one of mingled vexation and reproach;
she smiled and raising a goblet of wine to her lips, kissed the
brim, and gave it to him with an indescribably graceful, swaying
gesture of her whole form that reminded one of a tall white lily
bowing in the breeze. He seized the cup eagerly, drank from it and
returned it,--his momentary annoyance, whatever it was, passed,
and a joyous elation illumined his fine features. Then Lysia,
refilling the cup, kissed it again and handed it to Theos with so
much soft animation and tenderness in her face as she turned to
him, that his enforced calmness nearly gave way, and he had much
ado to restrain himself from falling at her feet in a transport of
passion, and crying out! ... "Love me, O thou sorceress-sovereign of