Here she stopped in her incoherent speech, and strove to release her hand from Sah-luma's, her blue eyes filling with infinite anxiety and distress.
"I pray thee, good stranger," she entreated with touching mildness,--"whosoever thou art, delay me not, but let me go! ... I am but a poor love-sorrowful maid on whom Love hath at last taken pity!--be gentle therefore, and hinder me not on my way to Sah- luma. I have waited for happiness so long! ... so long!"
Her young, plaintive voice quavered into a half sob,--and again she endeavored to break away from the Laureate's hold. But he, overcome by the excess of his own grief and agitation, seized her other hand, and drew her close up to him.
"Niphrata, Niphrata!" he cried despairingly. "What evil hath befallen thee? Where is thy sight.. thy memory? ... LOOK! ... Look straight in these eyes of mine, and read there my truth and tenderness! ... I am Sah-luma, thine own Sah-luma! ... thy poet, thy lover, thy master, thy slave, . . all that thou wouldst have me be, I am! Whither wouldst thou wander in search of me? Thou hast no further to go, dear heart, than these arms, . . thou art safe with me, my singing bird, . . come! ..Let me lead thee hence, and home!"
She watched him while he spoke, with a strange expression of distrust and uneasiness. Then, by a violent effort, she wrenched her hands from his clasp, and stood aloof, waving him back with an eloquent gesture of amazed reproach.
"Away!" she said, in firm accents of sweet severity,--"Thou art a demon that dost seek to tempt my soul to ruin! THOU Sah-luma!".. and she lifted her lily-crowned head with a movement of proud rejection.. "Nay! ... thou mayst wear his look, his smile, . . thou mayst even borrow the clear heaven-lustre of his eyes,--but I tell thee thou art fiend, not angel, and I will not follow thee into the tangled ways of sin! Oh, thou knowest not the meaning of true love, thou! ... There is treachery on thy lips, and thy tongue is trained to utter honeyed falsehood! Methinks thou hast wantonly broken many a faithful heart!--and made light jest of many a betrayed virgin's sorrow! And thou darest to call thyself MY Poet, . . MY Sah-luma, in whom there is no guile, and who would die a thousand deaths rather than wound the frailest soul that trusted him! ... Depart from me, thou hypocrite in Poet's guise! ... thou cruel phantom of my love! ... Back to that darkness where thou dost belong, and trouble not my peace!"
Sah-luma recoiled from her, amazed and stupefied. Theos clenched his hands together in a sort of physical effort to keep down the storm of emotions working within him,--for Niphrata's words burnt into his brain like fire, ..too well, too well he understood their full intensity of meaning! She loved the IDEAL Sah-luma, . . the Sah-luma of her own pure fancies and desires, . . NOT the REAL man as he was, with all his haughty egotism, vainglory, and vice,-- vice in which he took more pride than shame. Perhaps she had never known him in his actual character,--she, like other women of her lofty and ardent type, had no doubt set up the hero of her life as a god in the shrine of her own holy and enthusiastic imagination, and had there endowed him with resplendent virtues, which he had never once deemed it worth his while to practise. Oh the loving hearts of women!--How much men have to answer for, when they voluntarily break these clear mirrors of affection, wherein they, all unworthy, have been for a time reflected angel-wise, with all the warmth and color of an innocently adoring passion shining about them like the prismatic rays in a vase of polished crystal! To Niphrata, Sah-luma remained as a sort of splendid divinity, for whom no devotion was too vast, too high, or too complete, . . better, oh surely far better that she should die in her beautiful self-deception, than live to see her elected idol descend to his true level, and openly display all the weaknesses of his volatile, flippant, godless, sensual, yet, alas! most fascinating and genius-gifted nature, . . a nature, which, overflowing as it was with potentialities of noble deeds, yet lacked sufficient intrinsic faith and force to accomplish them! This thought stung Theos like a sharp arrow-prick, and filled him with a strange, indescribable penitence; and he stood in dumb misery, remorsefully eyeing his friend's consternation, disappointment, and pained bewilderment, without being able to offer him the slightest consolation.