"O thou bearded warrior, are we then still in the self-centered period
of our romance?"
"I fear not; I see the twilight."
Amaryllis looked down and her face grew more weary.
"You have maintained a long fidelity, John," she said.
He gazed at her, waiting a further remark, and she went on at last.
"I wonder why?"
He flung out his hands.
"Shall I be faithless to Sheba? Is the charm of the Queen of Kings
faded? Shall I turn from Aphrodite or weary of the lips of Astarte?"
"Nothing so stamps your love of me as wicked, in your own eyes, as the
paganism you fall into when you speak of it!"
He laughed.
"But it is not that I am lovely which made you a lover--until now,"
she went on. "I have seen men faithful to women unlovely as Hecate. It
is not that. And I am still as I was, but--"
He looked down on the triple bands of the ampyx that bound her
gold-powdered hair and said: "It is you who have grown weary; not I."
She astutely drew back from the ground upon which she had entered. It
lay in the power of this Gischalan to refuse further protection to her
out of sheer spite if she made her disaffection too patent.
"O leader of hosts, canst thou be mummer, languishing poet, pettish
woman and spoiled princeling all in one? No! And I shall love the
clanking of arms and thy mailed footsteps all the more if thou
permittest me to look upon irresponsible folly while thou art absent."
"Have thy way. I have mine. Furthermore, I wish to thank thee for the
companion thou sentest me at breakfast. He who dines alone with her,
hath his table full. Farewell."