"I am not worthy"--answered Theos, bending his head in low salutation to the two lovely girls, who stood eying him with a certain wistful wonder--"One spray from Sah-luma's discarded wreath will best suffice me!"
Sah-luma broke into a laugh of absolute delight.
"I swear thou speakest well and like a true man!" he said joyously. "Unfamous as thou art, thou deservest honor for the frank confession of thy lack of merit! Believe me, there are some boastful rhymers in Al-Kyris who would benefit much by a share of thy becoming modesty! Give him his wish, Gisenya--" and Gisenya, obediently detaching a sprig of myrtle from the wreath Sah-luma had worn all day, handed it to Theos with a graceful obeisance-- "For who knows but the leaves may contain a certain witchery we wot not of, that shall endow him with a touch of the divine inspiration!"
At that moment, a curious figure came shuffling across the splendid hall,--that of a little old man somewhat shabbily attired, upon whose wrinkled countenance there seemed to be a fixed, malign smile, like the smile of a mocking Greek mask. He had small, bright, beady black eyes placed very near the bridge of his large hooked nose,--his thin, wispy gray locks streamed scantily over his bent shoulders, and he carried a tall staff to support his awkward steps,--a staff with which he made a most disagreeable tapping noise on the marble pavement as he came along.
"Ah, Sir Gad-about!" he exclaimed in a harsh, squeaky voice as he perceived Sah-luma--"Back again from your self-advertising in the city! Is there any poor soul left in Al-Kyris whose ears have not been deafened by the parrot-cry of the name of Sah-luma?--If there is,--at him, at him, my dainty warbler of tiresome trills!--at him, and storm his senses with a rhodomontade of rhymes without reason!--at him, Immortal of the Immortals!--Bard of Bards!--stuff him with quatrains and sextains!--beat him with blank verse, blank of all meaning!--lash him with ballad and sonnet-scourges, till the tortured wretch, howling for mercy, shall swear that no poet save Sah-luma, ever lived before, or will ever live again, on the face of the shuddering and astonished earth!"
And breathless with this extraordinary outburst, he struck his staff loudly on the floor, and straightway fell into such a violent fit of coughing that his whole lean body shook with the paroxysm.
Sah-luma laughed heartily,--laughter in which he was joined by all the assembled maidens, including the gentle, pensive-eyed Niphrata. Standing erect in his glistening princely attire, with one hand resting familiarly on Theos's arm, and the sparkle of mirth lighting up his handsome features, he formed the greatest contrast imaginable to the little shrunken old personage, who, clinging convulsively to his staff, was entirely absorbed in his efforts to control and overcome his sudden and unpleasant attack of threatened suffocation.