She gave him both--she who was prodigal of charity. Orestes came, with Ahasuerus at his heels, and Demetrios sent Melicent into the Women's Garden, so that father and son might talk together. She waited in this place for a half-hour, just as the proconsul had commanded her, obeying him for the last time. It was strange to think of that.
* * * * * It was not gladness which Melicent knew for a brief while. Rather, it was a strange new comprehension of the world. To Melicent the world seemed very lovely.
Indeed, the Women's Garden on this morning lacked nothing to delight each sense. Its hedges were of flowering jessamine; its walkways were spread with new sawdust tinged with crocus and vermilion and with mica beaten into a powder; and the place was rich in fruit-bearing trees and welling waters. The sun shone, and birds chaunted merrily to the right hand and to the left. Dog-headed apes, sacred to the moon, were chattering in the trees. There was a statue in this place, carved out of black stone, in the likeness of a woman, having enamelled eyes and three rows of breasts, with the lower part of her body confined in a sheath; and upon the glistening pedestal of this statue chameleons sunned themselves with distended throats. Round about Melicent were nodding armaments of roses and gillyflowers and narcissi and amaranths, and many violets and white lilies, and other flowers of all kinds and colours.
To Melicent the world seemed very lovely. Here was a world created by Eternal Love that people might serve love in it not all unworthily. Here were anguishes to be endured, and time and human frailty and temporal hardship--all for love to mock at; a sea or two for love to sever, a man-made law or so for love to override, a shallow wisdom for love to deny, in exultance that these ills at most were only corporal hindrances. This done, you have earned the right to come--come hand-in-hand--to heaven whose liege-lord was Eternal Love.
Thus Melicent, who knew that Perion loved her.
She sat on a stone bench. She combed her golden hair, not heeding the more coarse gray hairs which here and there were apparent nowadays. A peacock came and watched her with bright, hard, small eyes; and he craned his glistening neck this way and that way, as though he were wondering at this other shining and gaily coloured creature, who seemed so happy.
She did not dare to think of seeing Perion again. Instead, she made because of him a little song, which had not any words, so that it is not possible here to retail this song.