The City of Delight

"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."