Dame Melicent walked proudly through the Women's Garden, and presently entered a grove of orange trees, the most of which were at this season about their flowering. In this place was an artificial pool by which the trees were nourished. On its embankment sprawled the body of young Diophantus, a child of some ten years of age, Demetrios' son by Tryphera. Orestes had strangled Diophantus in order that there might be no rival to Orestes' claims. The lad lay on his back, and his left arm hung elbow-deep in the water, which swayed it gently.
Callistion sat beside the corpse and stroked its limp right hand. She had hated the boy throughout his brief and merry life. She thought now of his likeness to Demetrios.
She raised toward Melicent the dilated eyes of one who has just come from a dark place. Callistion said: "And so Demetrios is dead. I thought I would be glad when I said that. Hah, it is strange I am not glad."
She rose, as though with hard effort, as a decrepit person might have done. You saw that she was dressed in a long gown of black, pleated to the knees, having no clasp or girdle, and bare of any ornamentation except a gold star on each breast.
Callistion said: "Now, through my son, I reign in Nacumera. There is no person who dares disobey me. Therefore, come close to me that I may see the beauty which besotted this Demetrios, whom, I think now, I must have loved."
"Oh, gaze your fill," said Melicent, "and know that had you possessed a tithe of my beauty you might have held the heart of Demetrios." For it was in Melicent's mind to provoke the woman into killing her before worse befell.
But Callistion only studied the proud face for a long while, and knew there was no lovelier person between two seas. For time here had pillaged very sparingly; and if Dame Melicent had not any longer the first beauty of her girlhood, Callistion had nowhere seen a woman more handsome than this hated Frankish thief.
Callistion said: "No, I was not ever so beautiful as you. Yet this Demetrios loved me when I, too, was lovely. You never saw the man in battle. I saw him, single-handed, fight with Abradas and three other knaves who stole me from my mother's home--oh, very long ago! He killed all four of them. He was like a horrible unconquerable god when he turned from that finished fight to me. He kissed me then--blood-smeared, just as he was.... I like to think of how he laughed and of how strong he was."