fair Lysia!"--and he pressed her warm, delicate fingers with
unconscious fierceness,--"I would have sworn that in the Past thou
didst betray me!"

Her low laugh stirred the silence into a faint, tuneful echo.

"Thou foolish dreamer!" she murmured half mockingly, half tenderly
... "Thou art dazed with wine, steeped in song, bewitched with
beauty, and knowest nothing of what thou sayest! Methinks thou art
a crazed poet, and more fervid than Sah-luma in the mystic nature
of thine utterance,--thou shouldst be Laureate, not he! What if
thou wert offered his place? ... his fame?"

He looked at her, surprised and perplexed, and paused an instant
before replying. Then he said slowly:

"So strange a thing could never be ... for Sah-luma's place, once
empty, could not again be filled! I grudge him not his glory-
laurels,--moreover, ... what is Fame compared to Love!" He uttered
the last words in a low tone as though he spoke them to himself,
... she heard,--and a flash of triumph brightened her beautiful
face.

"Ah! ..." and she drooped her head lower and lower till her dark,
fragrant tresses touched his brow ... "Then, ... thou dost love
me?"

He started. A dull pang ached in his heart,--a chill of vague
uncertainty and dread. Love! ... was it love indeed that he felt?
... love, ... or ... base desire? Love ... The word rang in his