"Let the women enter!" he commanded--"Speak but Sah-luma's name and they will gather like waves rising to the moon,--but bid them be silent as they come, lest they disturb thoughts more lasting than their loveliness."
This with a significant glance toward the Laureate, who, sunk in his ivory chair, seemed rapt in meditation.
His beautiful face had grown grave, . . even sad, ... he played idly with the ornaments at his belt, ... and his eyes had a drowsy yet ardent light within them, as they flashed now and then from under the shade of his long curling lashes. The slave departed on his errand ... and Zabastes edging himself out from the hushed and attentive throng of nobles stood as it were in the foreground of the picture, his thin lips twisted into a sneer. and his lean hands grasping his staff viciously as though he longed to strike somebody down with it.
A moment or so passed, and then the slave returned, his silver rod uplifted, marshalling in a lovely double procession of white- veiled female figures that came gliding along as noiselessly as fair ghosts from forgotten tombs, each one carrying a garland of flowers. They floated, rather than walked, up to the royal dais, and there prostrated themselves two by two before the King, whose fiery glance rested upon them more carelessly than tenderly,--and as they rose, they threw back their veils, displaying to full view such exquisite faces, such languishing, brilliant eyes, such snow- white necks and arms, such graceful voluptuous forms, that Theos caught at the tapestry near him in reeling dazzlement of sight and sense, and wondered how Sah-luma seated tranquilly in the reflective attitude he had assumed, could maintain so unmoved and indifferent a demeanor.
Indifferent he was, however, even when the unveiled fair ones, turning from the King to the Poet, laid all their garlands at his feet,--he scarcely noticed the piled-up flowers, and still less the lovely donors, who, retiring modestly backwards, took their places on low silken divans, provided for their accommodation, in a semicircle round the throne. Again a silence ensued,--Sah-luma was evidently centred like a spider in a web of his own thought- weaving,--and his attendant gently swept the strings of the harp again to recall his wandering fancies. Suddenly he looked up, . . his eyes were sombre, and a musing trouble shadowed the brightness of his face.
"Strange it is, O King"--he said in low, suppressed tones that had in them a quiver of pathetic sweetness,--"Strange it is that to- night the soul of my singing dwells on sorrow! Like a stray bird flying 'mid falling leaves, or a ship drifting out from sunlight to storm, so does my fancy soar among drear, flitting images evolved from the downfall of kingdoms,--and I seem to behold in the distance the far-off shadow of Death..."