CHAPTER III

IMMORTAL LOVE AND MORTAL DEATH

“A woman’s blood. Afterwards the blood of another woman. Afterwards thine; but a little later.”

Demetrios repeated these words as he walked and a vague belief in them oppressed him with sadness. He had never believed in oracles drawn from the bodies of victims or from the movements of the planets. Such affinities seemed to him much too problematic. But the complex lines of the hand had of themselves a horoscopic aspect which was entirely individual and which he regarded with uneasiness. Thus the prediction remained in his mind.

He, too, gazed at the palm of his left hand where his life was displayed in mysterious and ineffaceable lines. He saw the signs without being able to understand their meaning, and passing his hand across his eyes he changed the subject of his meditation.

Chrysis, Chrysis, Chrysis.

The name beat in him like a fever. To satisfy her, to conquer her, to enclose her in his arms, to flee away with her to Syria, Greece, Rome or elsewhere, any place, in fact, where he had no mistresses and she no lovers: that was what he had to do and to do at once!

Of the three presents she had demanded one was already obtained. Two others remained to be procured, the comb and the necklace.

“First the comb,” he thought. He hastened his steps.

Every evening after sunset the wife of the High Priest sat with her back to the forest upon a marble seat from which a view of the sea could be obtained, and Demetrios was aware of this, for Touni, like many others, had been enamoured of him, and once she had told him that the day he desired her he could take her.

Thither he made his way.

She was there; but she did not see him approach; she was reclining with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched.

She was an Egyptian. Her name was Touni. She wore a thin tunic of bright purple without clasps or girdle, and with no other embroidery than two black stars upon her breasts. The thin stuff reached down to her knees and her little, round feet were shod with shoes of blue leather. Her skin was very swarthy, her lips were very thick, her fragile and supple waist seemed bowed down by the weight of her full breast. She was sleeping with open lips and quietly dreaming.

Demetrios took his seat in silence by her side.

He gradually drew nearer to her. A young shoulder, smooth and dark and muscular, delicately offered itself to him.

Lower down the purple muslin tunic was open at the thigh. Demetrios gently touched her, but she did not awake. Her dream changed but was not dispelled.

The eternal sea shimmered beneath a moon which was like a vast cup of blood, but still Touni slept on with bowed head.

The purple of the moon upon the horizon reached her from across the sea. Its glorious and fateful light bathed her in a flame which seemed motionless; but slowly the shadow withdrew from the Egyptian woman; one by one her black stars appeared, and at last there suddenly emerged from the shadows the comb, the royal comb desired by Chrysis.

Then the sculptor took in his two hands Touni’s sweet face and turned it towards him. She opened her eyes which grew big with surprise.

“Demetrios! Demetrios! You!”

Her two arms seized hold upon him.

“Oh!” she murmured in a voice vibrating with happiness, “oh! you have come, you are there. Is it you, Demetrios, who has awakened me with your hands? Is it you, son of my Goddess, O God of my body and life?”

Demetrios made a movement as if to draw back, but she at once came suddenly quite close to him.

“No,” she said, “what do you fear? I am not a woman to be feared by you, one surrounded by the omnipotence of the High Priest. Forget my name, Demetrios. Women in their lovers’ arms have no name. I am not the woman you believe me to be. I am only a creature who loves you and is filled with desire for you.”

Demetrios made her no answer.

“Listen once more,” she went on. “I know whom you possess. I do not desire to be your mistress, nor do I aspire to become my Queen’s rival. No, Demetrios, do with me what you will: look upon me as a little slave whom one takes and casts aside in a moment. Take me like one of the lowest of those poor courtesans who wait by the side of the pathway for furtive and abortive love. In fact what am I but one of them? Have the Gods given me anything more than they have bestowed upon the least of all my slaves? You at least have the beauty which comes from the Gods.”

Demetrios gazed at her still more gravely.

“What do you think, unhappy woman,” he asked, “also comes from the Gods?”

“Love.”

“_Or death._”

She got up.

“What do you mean? _Death...._ Yes, death. But that is so far away from me. In sixty years’ time I shall think of it. Why do you speak to me of death, Demetrios?”

He simply said--

“Death to-night.”

She burst into a frightened laugh.

“This evening ... surely not ... who says so? Why should I die?... answer me, speak, what horrible jest is this?...”

“You are condemned.”

“By whom?”

“By your destiny.”

“How do you know that?”

“I knew it because I, too, Touni, am involved in your destiny.”

“And my destiny wills that I die?”

“Your destiny demands that you die by my hand upon this seat.”

He seized her by the wrist.

“Demetrios,” she sobbed in her fear, “I will not cry out. I will not call for help. Let me speak.”

She wiped the sweat from her forehead.

“If death comes to me through you, death will be pleasant. I will accept it, I desire it; but listen to me.”

She dragged him into the darkness of the wood, stumbling from stone to stone.

“Since you have in your hands,” she continued, “everything we receive from the Gods, the thrill which gives life and that which takes it away, open your two hands upon my eyes, Demetrios ... that of love and that of death, and if you do so, I shall die without regret.”

He gazed at her without replying, but she thought she could read assent in his face.

Transfigured for the second time she lifted up her face with a fresh expression in it, one of new-born desire driving away terror with the strength of desperation.

She said no more, but from between her parted lips each breath seemed to be a song of victory.

She seized him in her arms crying--

“Ah! Kill me ... kill me, Demetrios, why are you waiting!”

He rose, gazed once more at Touni as she lifted up her great eyes to him, and taking one of the two gold pins from her hair, he buried it in her left breast.