nothing in luxury and riches and things of price; and thereafter she
abode at Nacumera, to all appearances, as the favourite among the
proconsul's wives.

It must be recorded of Demetrios that henceforth he scrupulously
demurred even to touch her. "I have purchased your body," he proudly
said, "and I have taken seizin. I find I do not care for anything which
can be purchased."

It may be that the man was never sane; it is indisputable that the
mainspring of his least action was an inordinate pride. Here he had
stumbled upon something which made of Demetrios of Anatolia a temporary
discomfort, and which bedwarfed the utmost reach of his ill-doing into
equality with the molestations of a house-fly; and perception of this
fact worked in Demetrios like a poisonous ferment. To beg or once again
to pillage he thought equally unworthy of himself. "Let us have
patience!" It was not easily said so long as this fair Frankish woman
dared to entertain a passion which Demetrios could not comprehend, and
of which Demetrios was, and knew himself to be, incapable.

A connoisseur of passions, he resented such belittlement tempestuously;
and he heaped every luxury upon Melicent, because, as he assured
himself, the heart of every woman is alike.

He had his theories, his cunning, and, chief of all, an appreciation of
her beauty, as his abettors. She had her memories and her clean heart.
They duelled thus accoutred.

Meanwhile his other wives peered from screened alcoves at these two and
duly hated Melicent. Upon no less than three occasions did Callistion--