ivory pegs and poles of gold.

"The enchantments were as thick as shadows under the trees: perhaps
the loveliest of women riding a snow-white mule, with a saddle cloth
of red samite, or, wrapped in her shining hair, on a leopard with
yellow eyes, lured you to a pavilion, scattered with rushes and
flowers and magical herbs, and a shameful end. Or a silver doe would
weep, begging you to pierce her with your sword, and, when you did,
there knelt the daughter of the King of Wales.

"But I started to tell you about the worship of beauty. Plato
started it although Cardinal Pietro Bembo was responsible for the
creed. He lived in Italy, in an age like a lily. It developed mostly
at Florence in the Platonic Academy of Cosomo and Pico della
Mirandola. Love was the supreme force, and its greatest expression a
desire beyond the body."

He gazed at Linda with a quizzical light in his eyes deep in shadow.

"Love," he said again, and then paused. "One set of words will do as
well as another. You will understand, or not, with something far
different from intellectual comprehension. The endless service of
beauty. Of course, a woman--but never the animal; the spirit always.
Born in the spirit, served in the spirit, ending in the spirit. A
direct contradiction, you see, to nature and common sense, frugality
and the sacred symbol of the dollar.

"It wouldn't please your Mr. Jasper, with his heaps and heaps of
money. Mr. Jasper would consider himself sold. But Novalis, not so
very long ago, understood.... A dead girl more real than all earth.